The Mercy Seat At Profiles: Why A Well-Done Play Really Pissed Me Off

By Julienne Bilker in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 5, 2009 9:20PM

photo of Cheryl Graeff and Darrell W. Cox by Wayne Karl

I hope you’ll forgive my forsaking the usual Chicagoist first-person plural on this one - I think it’s warranted.

The Mercy Seat, which opened Profiles Theatre’s season on Thursday, takes place in New York City, on September 12, 2001. Ben should have been at the World Trade Center the day before, but he stopped off to get some from his mistress, Abby - who also happens to be his boss - on his way to work, and hasn’t left her apartment since. With his wife and children assuming him to be dead, Ben sees an opportunity to run away and start a new life with Abby.

Although she wants Ben to call home to let his family know that he isn’t dead, while also coming clean about their relationship, Abby entertains his proposition, in her own way. Both condescending and passive aggressive, she snowballs issues about their relationship’s balance of power, her massive guilt complex, and the extent to which she is willing to enable his behavior. She spends a lot of the play yelling, hurling vitriol and getting under both his skin and ours. He spends a lot of the play deflecting insults and making excuses for why he’d rather everyone think he’s dead than tell his wife he doesn’t want to be with her anymore. And he yells some nasty things too.

The circuitousness of the argument is frustrating - I began to feel a sense of inescapable, helpless inertia about half an hour in. And then I thought, maybe that’s the point. That’s pretty much how I felt that day - I only lived 15 miles away, but I couldn’t do a damn thing to help. It was sad and infuriating. But hold the violins - these people are not frustrated with their inability to aid in a time of crisis - Ben’s half-hearted “I wish I could do something…” is pure lip-service, and Abby isn’t much better. These people are frustrated with the circumstances of their own relationship. Although she would feel guilty leaving Ben’s daughters without a father, it seems that Abby is more concerned with losing her career if she leaves. And Ben - yes, I realize I’m repeating myself - would still rather everyone think he’s dead than tell his wife the truth.

One of the first major theatrical responses to 9/11, The Mercy Seat was a commercial success when it opened in 2002. Playwright Neil LaBute has said that the impetus for the show’s creation was his own reaction to September 11. According to this NY Times article from 2002, “With flights canceled [on September 13], [LaBute] had to take the train [from Chicago to New York], stretching a 2-hour trip into 21 hours. He may have felt horrified at the national tragedy, and scared, and grateful to be alive, but only one thought registered: ‘This is inconvenient.’” The play is an attempt to reach all those people who had their own selfish moments at that time.

Ok, I totally get that. Besides feeling sad and frustrated, I had my own selfish thoughts - namely, I was worried about starting my freshman year of college in three days, 800 miles away. I wanted to get to school when everyone else did, and I wanted to get out of New York. Like LaBute, I felt horrified, scared and grateful to be alive, but I’d been waiting to start a new chapter of my life. I wanted to get on with it. I felt inconvenienced. And I felt really guilty for thinking that way. But cut the violins again - this play goes way beyond the concept of feeling inconvenienced by a national tragedy - it didn’t say to me, “Everyone is selfish sometimes, and that’s okay.” It said, “These people are fucking awful. Look at how awful they are.”

I fully understand that a play about selfish inconvenience would have very little dramatic punch. The stakes have to be higher - but maybe they were too high for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about what kind of person fakes his own death out of pure cowardice. The play charged me emotionally, digging up memories of a chaotic and confusing time in my life in an attempt to make me relate to, and maybe feel sorry for, these characters - it was all a little too manipulative. These are shitty people arguing about doing shitty things. And it pissed me off. It also managed to coerce me into making the selfish choice to make this piece more about me than it probably should be.

At the risk of generalizing, Neil LaBute tends to write about bad people. I knew that going in, and maybe it’s not fair of me to look at the show through a lens that prefers to see characters with redeeming qualities. I do think LaBute fans will like this show - Darrell W. Cox and Cheryl Graeff are perfect in their roles, and both are occasionally sympathetic. But I still hated watching them.

I’m really anxious to hear other people’s reactions to this show - please leave me a comment if you see it, or if you’ve seen another production.

The Mercy Seat, through November 15 at Profiles Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway. Tickets $30-$35 ($25-$30 for students/seniors, group discounts available), 773-549-1815.