Theatre Review by Ron Fassler . . .
Actor and Playwright James Hindman’s What Doesn’t Kill You, which recently opened at the 59E59 Theaters complex in midtown, has just been extended through November 3. There’s a reason for that: it’s really good.
As a rule, one-person shows can be a mixed bag. When someone takes the leap of faith that audiences will be interested in a story, or the story of their life, there’s the sad chance they’re mistaken. From experience, this genre often reveals there’s only a small fraction that are actually stage worthy. Yet there are all too many practitioners of this art form who attempt anywhere from an hour to ninety minutes or more with blind confidence. Hindman, who is in his early sixties, narrows his tale to a heart attack he suffered a few years ago that instead of ending his life, focused his energies on taking risks he’d always been somewhat reluctant to try with the time he has left. The genesis of how he came to write What Doesn’t Kill You was simple. “I was out having drinks with the producers at New Jersey Rep,” Hindman told an interviewer, “and I was telling them the funny things that happened to me when I had my heart attack. After a while one of them said… ‘You should write a show about this. If you do, we’ll produce it.’ At that point in my life it sounded like the scariest thing in the world… so I said yes.”
As an openly gay man, Hindman treats us to his thoughts and feelings on the number of years he spent worried about people’s perceptions of his sexuality and how they fed into the choices he made. Now happily married and in a committed relationship for fifteen years, he appears like someone adjusted to the world he inhabits. But along with the best of us, he has questions. The one that steers the play into the direction of the sublime is a chance visit to a Holocaust memorial outside Prague. Spontaneously suggesting it as an outing while on vacation with his husband, the decision came solely out of looking out for his soles. Yes, you read that right. His feet were killing him from all the walking he’d been enduring and three hours to and from on a bus felt like heaven even if the destination was towards a rather grim spot. His epiphany on his visit is not only remarkably astute, but personally transforming. Not to spoil it, it has to do with the importance of teachers in our lives, a subject that is not only worthy of discussion but absolutely stage worthy, which Hindman and his director Suzanne Barabas, take full advantage.
With almost no props and just a few chairs, Hindman inhabits the small space with charm to spare. He creates a warm atmosphere and an arena in which the possibilities for engagement seem endless. Inviting the audience in, he asks questions in hopes for answers, though as the play goes on he does less of that due to the story taking over. By its finish, the accumulation of his experience and his search for not just meaning, but connection feels profound. Naturally, any story that touches on the holocaust will lead in that direction, but everything expressed here feels unforced, all to Hindman and Barabas’s credit.
If you’re looking for the rejuvenation that comes with unexpectedly being treated to an intimate seventy minutes of theatre, What Doesn’t Kill You provides such an oasis. What Hindman does here is revelatory and provides a map of the human heart.
What Doesn’t Kill You is in a limited engagement through November 3 at 59E59 Theatres, 59 E. 59th Street, NYC. For further information, please visit https://www.59e59.org
Photos by Carol Rosegg.
