Some things you're willing to look at, and some things you avoid.
That's what “Private Eyes,” the first production this season from Actors Theatre Playhouse in West Chesterfield, N.H., is all about.
Performances are 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, June 20 through July 13.
The play, written by Steven Dietz and directed by Sam Pilo, is “a relationship thriller about infidelity and how it's perceived,” says Pilo.
“Private Eyes” stars Eric Cutler, Emmaline Bliss, Richard Epstein, Nan Mann, and Michael Duffin. The quirky romantic comedy examines what Pilo says are the “perennial vexing dilemmas” of truth, reality, and marital fidelity.
In the play, two married actors find their relationship sorely tested when the wife becomes involved in an affair with the director. The rehearsing “cast” finds itself plumbing the depths of betrayal and deception only to stumble on an enigma: When is an infidelity not an infidelity?
“Private Eyes” takes audiences deep into the intricate mazes and bewildering whorls of trust and love, Pilo says.
Steven Dietz's work is largely performed regionally. He placed eighth on American Theatre's list of top 10 most-produced playwrights in America (excluding Shakespeare) tying with Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee for number of productions, at 15.
Dietz was recently awarded the 2011-12 Tennessee Repertory Theatre Ingram New Works Fellowship; previous winners included David Auburn and John Patrick Shanley.
Dietz's “Private Eyes,” first performed in March 1996 by the Arizona Theatre Company, gained wide recognition when it was presented as part of the 1997 Humana Festival of New American Plays, a widely attended annual event at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Ky.
Though it never had a Broadway appearance, it has been Dietz's most commercially successful play, with continued performances worldwide.
“I don't want to give too much away with the plot of 'Private Eyes,' because the show is about illusion and surprise, but I can say that the play is like a Chinese box,” Pilo says. “You never know where you stand. It switches from comedy to serious stuff, back to comedy, and then into therapy.”
Pilo says he considers this “comedy of suspicion” akin to “a circle in a spiral and a wheel within a wheel.”
“Nothing is ever quite what it seems,” he says. “An affair is taking place. Or perhaps the affair is part of the play being rehearsed. Or perhaps our hero, Matthew, has imagined all of it simply to have something to report to his therapist. And, finally, there's a mysterious woman seeming to shadow the others who brings the story to its surprising conclusion. Or does she? The audience itself plays the role of detective in this hilarious thriller about love, lust, and the power of deception.”
Dietz claims that the origin of “Private Eyes” began with “a scene in which two lovers fail to speak the truth.”
“And, like a lie, the play grew,” he says. “It began to go to greater and greater lengths to keep its own deceit afloat. It took my sense of structure for a ride and built a web of such complexity that clarity (a.k.a., 'truth') was rendered virtually impossible. The theme of deception pervades the play at all levels. Besides the deception of the double adultery, each character takes several opportunities to deceive the other, be it in fantasy or for real.”
“In the end, this is a play about trust,” Pilo says. “How do you find truth when trust isn't there? Trust anchors what we do. As the play considers an affair and all the repercussion of the unwinding of an affair, it examines how trust lies at the core of a relations. Finally, all you have is trust.”
Additional productions, readings on tap
Actors Theatre Playhouse continues its 2013 season with a series of full productions and staged readings, offering William Luce's “Lillian” on July 20 and 27.
In this staged reading, playwright Lillian Hellman, alone in the austere waiting room of a New York hospital, awaits the death of her friend and lover Dashiell Hammett. Through the fatigue and weariness of this long night, she reminisces on her life and loves. Terri Storti portrays Lillian in this one-woman show.
For four weekends in August, Actor's Theatre's second fully staged production this year will be Annie Baker's “Circle Mirror Transformation.” Winner of the Best New American Play 2009 award, this off-Broadway comedy hit about four lost and lonely class members who learn as much about life as about theater takes place in the small town of Shirley, Vermont.
On Sept. 7 and 14, in a staged reading of David Hare's “Breath of Life,” Storti and Shoshana Rihn play two English women of a certain age who, over the course of one day and night, divulge and dissect their relationship with the man who left them both for a younger woman.
Next up is a highlight of every season. For four weekends, from Sept. 20 to Oct. 12, the very popular Ten Minute Play Festival will be returning, when, as Pilo claims, “anything can happen in 10 minutes - and it usually does.”
The final presentation by Actors Theater Playhouse this year is a staged reading of Martin McDonagh's “The Pillowman” on Oct. 19 and 26. The drama centers on a writer in a totalitarian state who is being interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a series of child murders.