INTERVIEW: How to bring your partner back to life in ‘The Briefly Dead’
Stephen Kaliski’s The Briefly Dead, currently playing at 59E59 Theaters in Midtown Manhattan, reinterprets a Euripedes play with a contemporary flair. In the show, King Admetos finds that he is able to bring his wife, Alcestis, back to life, which makes for an awkward conversation the morning after the resurrection.
Kaliski’s play is directed by Elizabeth Ostler and features a cast consisting of Mia Isabella Aguirre, Sofiya Cheyenne, Kristin Fulton, Paul Hinkes, Ben Kaufman, Katie Proulx, Sarah Wadsley and Jenna Zafiropoulos. Performances of the Adjusted Realities production run through Dec. 10.
“It’s loosely based on a Greek tragedy, on a Euripedes play, but people do not need to know anything about that to pick this up,” Kaliski said in a recent phone interview. “The king has lost his queen during the course of the show, and then suddenly at the end, there’s this miracle where the classic mythological figure Heracles, or Hercules, goes down into the underworld and steals the wife back from the dead and brings her back to life for the grieving king. And then the [original] play ends right there, so in our show, which is almost like a sequel to that, it’s looking at what happens when the love of your life suddenly comes back from the dead.”
Comparisons to the recent Broadway hit A Doll’s House: Part 2 are appropriate, but The Briefly Dead heads in different directions than its source material. It’s contemporary, quirky and asks some tough questions about transformation after major events in one’s life.
“Is there ever really any going back to the way that we were after that event?” Kaliski asked. “It’s almost a love story in reverse with them having been in love at a certain point, but then when they’re finally reunited, we’re looking at what has really changed there. Has anything actually been lost, or can they reclaim the love that they once had. So it’s sort of using this Greek foundation, but hopefully it’s a pretty exciting contemporary cocktail of a bunch of different elements that people can enjoy in its own right without knowing any of the source material.”
The play includes shadow puppetry, which is thanks to its director, Ostler, a gifted puppeteer. There’s also live music, which makes The Briefly Dead a love letter to many theatrical forms.
“At moments you might sense that it’s a traditional kitchen sink drama with two characters having a very straightforward scene on stage,” the playwright said. “At other moments, we might have a full on ballad being sung with musical theater lighting and staging, and other moments we do have these puppets carrying the day. So it’s a real mix of styles to tell one story.”
As audience members leave 59E59 Theaters, Kaliski hopes they have given thought to how precious life can be and how an individual’s life belongs to that one person — and no one else.
“One of the big questions in the play is: Who really owns a life,” he said. “So when this queen comes back from the dead, there’s a bunch of people in the show telling her who she was. She doesn’t really remember the circumstances of her death or why she was in love with this guy in the first place, so she’s got her husband telling her, ‘No, no you love this. You love that.’ She’s got people trying to remind her what her hobbies are and why she should feel a certain way, why she should be happy that she’s back from the dead, but as the play moves along, it really pushes against the idea that anybody has any right to tell us who we are, that we are the owners of our own outcomes. So I hope that people really get a sense of the voice of the self at the end of the show.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Briefly Dead is currently running at 59E59 Theaters in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
