With the 2024 presidential election campaign in full swing, the time is right for author Catherine Gropper’s new political play The Meeting: The Interpreter, based on the actual events of the infamous Trump Tower Meeting of 2016, the Congressional hearings and Senate interrogations that ensued, and her chance encounter with one of the key real-life figures in the winter of 2020. Directed by Brian Mertes, the two-hander, playing a limited Off-Broadway engagement at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, stars Frank Wood as the titular Russian/American interpreter, a first-person witness to and participant in the event, who was called to testify, and Kelley Curran as the Russian lawyer who employed him, with countless additional characters played by both, represented through puppets worked by them (puppet design and construction by Julian Crouch), and in live-feed video on a huge downstage projection screen, with the videography team seen on stage, actively shooting the actors from an encircling railroad track (with Tatiana Stolporskaya serving as director of videography and camera). It’s a gimmicky and confusing look at what actually went on, and if you don’t already know (or even if you do), it’s very hard to follow.
The action is set in 2016-17, in the US Senate Hearing Room in Washington, DC (represented by a table and two chairs, and an upstage recording booth; set by Jim Findlay, with apropos props by Kate Field), a restaurant in NYC (a table audience left), and a board room in New York’s Trump Tower (told through puppetry), then later (as Curran pulls back a curtain audience right), in a direct-address poetic explanation of the playwright’s interest in the subject, and an epilogue of texts on the screen (projections by Yana Biryukova) providing present-day updates on the most recent news about those involved (including the Trump family and cohorts – Paul Manafort among them).
Under Mertes’ direction, the performance uses over-the-top neo-expressionist movement with an overall absurdist tone (choreography and movement by Orlando Pabotoy), segments of rapid-fire delivery and split-second changes of character by Curran that blur the individuals involved, and a combination of actual redacted transcripts and behind-the-scenes conversations invented by Gropper (or conveyed to her by The Interpreter?), with a disclaimer in the program stating that “This is a work of dramatic interpretation, and any resemblance to actual people and events is strictly coincidental.” Hmmm.
Wood and Curran embrace the material and direction they’ve been given, embodying the surreal sensibility of the show, accentuated by Barbara Samuels’ lighting and sound and musical composition by Dan Baker, with oddly interspersed snapping, tapping, and pounding the tables, taking bites out of a shared apple, metatheatrical breaks (e.g., “Cue music”), and spinning on their joined tête-à-tête chair (one of the more clever bits in the show is a close-up live-feed take-off on the head-to-head by the two standing actors), followed by him walking, running, skipping, and dancing around it and into the booth, presumably designed to suggest The Interpreter’s psychological state, dealing with the pressures of the interrogation, his ostensibly innocent role in the meeting, and his situation in America, where he just wants to make a living, focus on his family, and enjoy the freedom of being a citizen here.
Of course, that would all come across in the Tony-winning Wood’s voice, demeanor, facial expressions, and body language, without the need for the theatrical absurdities that render a serious subject, with significant references to the Magnitsky Act (first passed under the Obama administration in 2012, then adopted by countries around the world), ridiculous. Curran, too, proves her acting chops with her non-stop shifts in character and pacing, quick changes of costume accessories (costumes by Olivera Gajic), and her authentic Russian accent as the lawyer (with dialect coaching by Jane Guyer Fujita and Snezhana Chernova serving as cultural consultant), without the need for the annoying overarching gimmickry.
While some might find The Meeting: The Interpreter’s quirky approach to the 2016 election interference, attempt to discredit the opposing candidate, and Russian involvement in it entertaining, I found it jumbled and gratuitous. But then again, so much of the political spectrum is just that. If you go, do your reading on the topic first, so you’re familiar with the real characters and germane facts of the nonfictional elements on which the show is based.
Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes, without intermission.
The Meeting: The Interpreter plays through Sunday, August 25, 2024, at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, 423 West 46th Street, NYC. For tickets (priced at $43.75-$143.75, including fees), go online.
