I guess the saying, “save the best for last,” is true. “The Humans” was an amazing play by Stephan Karam. Compared to the other performances that we watched this semester, “The Humans” was the only performance where I did not feel out of place. The other performances, especially the operas, were very intimidating for an 18-year-old, who has never been to a performance where the audience was not supposed to clap or cheer until “told to do so.” In all honesty, this was probably the first and only performance that we went to, where I did not check my phone for the time.
The play captured my attention from the second it started and kept me intrigued for the entire 90 minutes of it. Besides being in a more comfortable and relaxed environment, the play was extremely relatable for me as I’m sure it was for everyone else. I grew up and am currently still living in one of those sketchy, shitty Chinatown apartment buildings, which maybe gives me more expertise to be able to say that you definitely do not get two floors of an apartment unless you paid for both floors and you rarely get an elevator. Regardless, the old Asian lady that is always pounding something does live in the room above you and the walls are paper thin.
Growing up in one of these buildings also skewed my perception of what was going to happen in the end. Everyone seems to be in consensus that they thought the faceless woman was going to appear, but I thought someone with a gun got into the building and was going to shoot Erik, the father. I have never encountered a situation like this, but there have definitely been suspicious people, who were not residents, that would wait outside of the apartment building and wait for residents to open the door and “let them in.” I guess it’s okay since we were both wrong and the more plausible person that entered the building was an old Asian person pushing a cart (which is very accurate in Chinatown).
Moving away from the relatablility of the apartment building for me, I wanted to focus on the best performer of the play. While the entire cast was really funny and did a great job portraying their characters, the best performer was Lauren Klein, who portrayed Fiona “Momo” Blake, the grandmother. She did not have a lot of lines or move a lot, but the audience still got a sense of who she is and who she was. While the rest of the cast was being dynamic, Lauren Klein had the harder task of staying still. She spent a majority of the play laying on the couch, pretending to be asleep, which is probably incredibly boring after a while. She also had the difficult role of playing someone with dementia, which is arguably a more difficult role to accurately portray than the others.
Her performance during the outburst was also amazing and extremely convincing. Perhaps it was only convincing for me since I’ve never had to go through losing a loved one through dementia. Hopefully, Momo’s outburst is the closest I ever come to witnessing something like this, but during the outburst, I felt scared. I was terrified of losing her, which sounds ridiculous since it was only a play. Regardless, throughout the play, the cast does an amazing job of making you fall in love with each character and making you feel like family. They share their darkest moments with you and invite you to be a guest during a holiday as family-oriented as Thanksgiving. As a result, their pains and fears became mine.
I would recommend this play to anyone. You don’t have to have gone through the exact same things that the characters are going through. We have all gone through similar experiences that make this play relatable. Overall, “The Humans” is an amazing play and I am happy to say that I have seen it.
I definitely agree with your point that this play was definitely in a more relaxed setting. It was not a dramatic opera in a very extravagant setting where we were expected to remain quite throughout the play or had to clap during specific times. It was nice that the audiences laughed several points throughout the play. It was also nice that we were not expected to dress up for the occasion which made the whole experience more relaxing. I also expected a dramatic or scary ending and was a bit surprised when I learned that the ending was just him walking out the door. However, it made the play more real and relatable which was a reoccurring theme throughout the play and it only made sense to continue that theme until the ending.
I like how you mentioned MoMo being your favorite character. A lot of people can overlook her role in the play, especially with all of the other problems and complex characters presented in the play. However, her character definitely gave the entire play more meaning and “realness.” I agree that as the play progressed is started to feel very concerned for certain characters as if their problems were mine. This usually happens to me with any show or movie; there are times where I have to remind myself that this is not real life and I don’t have to feel emotionally attached to characters that don’t exist.
I agree with the prospect that “The Humans” provided its viewers with a larger sense of realism than did works such as Otello or Elektra. I suppose that this sense of realism was founded on the language used within the play and the play’s appeal to middle-american culture. I found that the language of the play, in terms of both English as its language and the tone of the play itself, to be incredibly engaging. As students of an American college, we use English as the primarily mode of connect between ourselves and our fellow peers. This realization most likely allowed me to feel as if the characters of the play were speaking with me directly. This semblance of relativity coupled with the use of issues in the modern day allowed me to step out of my seemingly limited role of a viewer into the role of an individual who plays an integral role within the play; however, this level of engagement was purely superficial and I had not left the comfort of my seat throughout the entirety of the play. I also agree with your point that the setting of the play was more relaxed. I did not feel as if I was being forced to act a certain way throughout the play; emotions, and their associated sounds, were allowed to make way onto the confines of the stage itself. I would also like to highlight this level of audience tolerance, by cast, in the play. I believe that the individual put in charge of script writing had created certain gaps in dialogue for laughter and audience reaction. I believe that the amalgamation of these elements had created a situation in which we felt the highest level of enjoyment when compared to those of other plays we had seen.