DANA H. tells the harrowing true story of a woman held captive in a series of Florida motels for five months. Told in Dana's own words and reconstructed for the stage by her son, playwright Lucas Hnath, this groundbreaking work shatters the boundaries of the art form and challenges our understanding of good and evil.
Maybe not the first observation to make about Dana H., playwright Lucas Hnath's new piece, is that it contains an unforgettable feat. All the same, I'm going to observe it. Throughout, Deirdre O'Connell, a New York City actress not nearly as celebrated as she deserves to be, pulls off an unusually astounding accomplishment. (The awards she's already amassed during her career must be near to collapsing a home shelf.) For the overwhelming part of 80 minutes, O'Connell lip-syncs a testimony that playwright Hnath's mother gave some time ago about her life, a life marked dramatically by a terrifying episode from which she still hasn't recovered. For that matter, she isn't entirely convinced it happened.
Watching Dana H. is like listening to a fascinating true-crime podcast, and part of the interest is in the mysteries that adhere to Dana's account, which may be distorted by trauma and time. There are things she can't explain about what happened to her, and at times you wonder what she is leaving out or, perhaps, what Hnath has chosen not to include; wrestling with your response to Dana as a narrator is part of what makes the play so resonant. This is a woman of resilient Christian faith but also a woman with a dark side-she casually mentions having dabbled in Satanism-and a complicated history. (She was 'pretty well prepped' for the physical abuse she suffered at Jim's hands, she says, by the beatings she received as a child.) And she's a survivor, but not completely. By the end of Dana H., you understand why she now works in hospice care, providing final comfort to people on the edge of death. Having been through hell, she carries demons with her still. She's self-possessed.
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