Stephen Karam’s “The Humans,” being given by Chatham Community Players, is a visceral show that has you roiling inside like a rollercoaster. We see the Blake family gathering at the new New York City apartment of their youngest daughter, Brigid (Emily Miller), and her boyfriend, Richard (Matt McCarthy). They have just moved in together, unmarried. As you might expect, her devoutly Catholic parents, Deidre (Noreen Farley) and Eric (Jeff Maschi), have strong feelings about this, as much as they love their daughter. Aimee (Sarah Pharaon) is the eldest, and she has her own jagged little pill to swallow–it’s her first Holiday after her wife has left her. And the ex has moved on. The Blakes have brought Eric’s mother, Fiona (Marguerite Wurtz), whom the girls absolutely adore. Fiona, however, is deep in the throes of Alzheimer’s and as much as everyone loves having her there, it is also painful to see her life now, while surrounded by the ghosts of other holidays.
This is the classic post-Modern family holiday. We have seen several plays and movies about Thanksgiving or Christmas or Halloween gone horribly wrong. That’s not this play. This play is about the thousand tiny tragedies that nibble away at the armor of family and that armor will always be love.
Through the unraveling of the thread of this story, we learn about the warp and weft of a family’s life. Aimee is a lawyer with a health issue that is exacerbated by the upheaval of her breakup. Brigid learns a tough lesson about the difference between how others see us and how we see ourselves. Deidre comes face to face with some realities about her marriage. Richard has challenges of his own, playing host and bar tender, then having to defend certain circumstances over which he has no control. And Eric has ghosts of his own that threaten his equilibrium in a number of ways. Fiona is a Greek chorus in her private world and the tidbits that spin out from the turbulent center are joined by another character–the apartment itself. This prewar marvel has a window looking up to the street and neighbors playing ninepins overhead. It becomes a brilliant petri dish holiday that will leave you with a thousand thoughts on your way home. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!
You could not pull off an acetylene hot play like this without a top notch troupe of actors. You may forget that they aren’t really a long term family when you see them in this hothouse jungle of meat-eating plants, nibbling at them from all around. It is difficult to watch, but oh, SO rewarding. See why this play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and won a Tony for Best Play in 2016.
You KNOW you want to go! Visit Chatham Community Players’ website at www.ChathamPlayers.org . Get your tickets NOW–“The Humans” closes, in Chatham, New Jersey, on October 19, so make haste—you’ll be glad you did.