SOMEBODY ELSE’S HOUSE
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In these texts–whose rhythms and tone color are unashamedly shaped by their author’s British background and by the influence of such writers as Dylan Thomas and William S. Burroughs–Cale dramatizes the pain of people who lack a sense of their own identity. The hero of “A Trace of Panic”–a brilliant absurdist piece, the theatrical equivalent of underground comics (and with his current short haircut Cale resembles cartoonist Robert Crumb’s early self-portraits)–thinks of himself as a canvas onto which he fastens pieces of other people’s personalities, turning himself into a walking collage. His parents, Paranoia and Panic, never gave him an identity of his own, he explains, and he had to adopt a sexuality from the local sexuality pound. (He named it Scruffy.)
While stirring our sympathy–and identification–with this self-made man, Cale also celebrates the need to slip into and out of different roles: even the darkest artist finds pleasure in making his art, after all, and Cale shares that combined darkness and joy with particular aplomb. But unlike many monologuists whose caricatures are shaped by externals, Cale–performing under the direction of David Petrarca in this Goodman Theatre-commissioned world premiere–works from the inside out to build his remarkably believable array of anxious individuals. Don’t look for props or costumes to establish the residents of Somebody Else’s House. Instead, look into Cale’s eyes: they change with every new scene, with every new story told by these compulsive confessors. And watch his body, motored not by imitation of others but by inner life.
Sparer and more somber than Cale’s last show at the Goodman, Deep in a Dream of You, Somebody Else’s House eschews the live jazz-rock that exhilaratingly punctuated the earlier piece in favor of recorded sound bites programmed by Michael Bodeen. In contrast to Dream’s abstract, painterly visual scheme, designer Michael S. Philippi has set this work in a houselike structure that’s disturbingly tilted back. Especially given the intimacy of the Goodman’s studio theater, this bare room draws us even further into the extraordinarily vivid world conjured up by the skill and sensitivity of a fascinating writer and consummate actor.
