One barometer by which you can gauge the impact of a play is by whether it can be interpreted in wildly different ways by different audience members. Woolly Mammoth’s production of Taylor Mac’s darkly absurd HIR, with its microcosmic collapse and reinforcement of the patriarchy within the claustrophobic confine of one suburban home is a brilliant example of this litmus-test quality—it presents a world that is simultaneously a paradise and nightmare, depending on the minute and your particular perspective.
Just from its title, you know that shifts in once-rigid paradigms are going to be at the center of this play. “Hir” is a pronoun that some transgender and non-binary people adopt (ze/hir/hirs being the equivalent of she/her/hers) and is a homophone for the word “here”—which in and of itself is an added layer of wit from Mac. (Mac’s own preference is to use “judy” not as a name but as a gender pronoun.)
The basic plot is as simple as it is outsized—it’s the performances and subtle power dynamics that Mac weaves into it that make for a thought-provoking and unforgettable piece of theatre. Isaac (Joseph J. Parks)—simply “I” to his mother—is a young soldier who’s just returned from a stint in the Marine Corps’ mortuary corps during an unnamed war to a home that’s dramatically altered from the one he left.
His abusive father, Arnold (Mitch Hébert), has suffered a stroke that has rendered him the shell of the angry, violent man he once one. This has created an opportunity for his wife, Paige (Emily Townley), to get a job, feed her husband estrogen to keep him docile, and abandon all responsibilities in terms of cooking and cleaning. Isaac’s lone sibling, Max (Malic White), has begun transitioning while he was gone and proudly sports a beard and powerful sex drive.
As the audience enters the theater, we are confronted by set designer’s Misha Kachman’s chaotically beautiful interpretation of a house not just surrendered to clutter but actively nurtured into its current state as an act of resistance. Arnold was tyrannical about the cleanliness of his house when he was in charge, and now that he’s out of power, Paige is reveling in the two-fold victory of being freed from the bonds of housework and vengefully forcing her husband to live in extreme clutter. (A huge shout out goes to the unnamed stagehands, who do heroic work during intermission.) Colin K. Bills’ lighting design and James Bigbee Garver’s sound and music all come together to create a space that’s both mundane and insane at the same time.
Director Shana Cooper does a masterful job of highlighting the subtleties in Mac’s script while maintaining a heightened sense of both tension and humor. (Have I mentioned that, in spite of its heavy themes, HIR is funny—often hysterically so? Because it is.) Parks plays Isaac as our audience cypher at first, all dumbfounded confusion, but soon becomes a more complex figure, one who deeply resents his father and his cruelty but also is eager to take up his powerful mantel of controlling patriarch as his own.
Hébert’s Arnold is an unsettling mix of pitiable clown and sinister presence still capable of wielding terrible power.
The real scene-stealer for me, however, is Townley’s Paige. As a woman recently out from under her husband’s authoritarian thumb, we simultaneously revel in her newfound freedom and cringe at her cruelty. She’s a woman who’s trying to create a better life for herself and her children but also can be just as dictatorial as her husband, even if it’s in the opposite direction.
White, who’s making a DC debut, imbues Max with an equally intriguing ambiguity as a person who’s equally exploring hir new identity and desperately craving hir brother’s traditionally masculine respect and approval.
Nothing’s black and white in the world Mac has created and each character slips on and off the title of hero, victim, and villain as easily as a silk nightgown. Mac started working on HIR more than a decade ago, which is remarkable because it feels like it could have been devised yesterday—or tomorrow.
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HIR by Taylor Mac. Directed by Shana Cooper. Cast: Emily Townley, Mitch Hébert, Joseph J. Parks, and Malic White. Set design: Misha Kachman. Lighting design: Colin K. Bills. Costume design: Ivania Stack. Sound and music design: James Bigbee Garver. Fight choreographer: Robb Hunter. Production dramaturg: Olivia Haller. Production stage manager: John Keith Hall. Produced by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Reviewed by John Bavoso.
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