Fortunately for writer-composer Michael John LaChiusa, his See What I Wanna See has plenty more to recommend it. He has adapted two short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa into a pair of appealing, if slightly wobbly, one-acts. The first transports the premise of Rashomon to fifties New York, as various parties try to explain an episode of sex and death in Central Park, one that may or may not constitute rape and murder. The music suggests that the composer has listened to plenty of Henry Mancini—plenty of Dizzy Gillespie, too. It’s taut and darkly compelling, even though as a nightclub singer turned victim/vixen Idina Menzel needs more fatale in her femme.
The second piece, in which a priest who has lost his faith after an unnamed tragedy very much akin to 9/11 sets out to expose the hollowness of all belief, shows an unexpected grace. LaChiusa’s writing here can be as sincere as the priest’s lament, “I watched the city fall / In silver clouds / Consuming crowds / Of unsuspecting souls,” and as funny as the argument by his aunt (the reliably terrific Mary Testa) that there can’t be a God because He hasn’t punished “those sonovabitches who write all those stupid new TV shows.” In what strikes me as the first post-post-9/11 play (about the consequences of the consequences of that day), LaChiusa does something rare and admirable, treating the possibility of belief with dignity. His fine, humane writing benefits from Henry Stram’s wonderfully sensitive performance as the priest.
One lesson of LaChiusa’s affecting play is that we see only what we want to see; belief requires effort. This week, the injunction certainly applies. Despite their rewards, neither LaChiusa’s show nor Sweeney Todd is easy to watch. They can be rich and satisfying, but only for people willing to tax their imaginations, to complete the act of creation. That sense of engagement, unique to the theater, always strikes me as the best reason to keep the doors open and the lights turned on. It’s why I’m willing to sit through unending nights of feckless, ugly, cynical misfires to experience a week like this one.
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