A Question of Mercy: Tim Spears as Anthony and Paula Langton as Doctor Chapman (photo credit Stan Barouh)

Is mercy killing humane? Should euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide be legal?  These questions are at the forefront of David Rabe’s A Question of Mercy (Directed by Jim Petosa) now playing at the Atlantic Stage 2 Theatre.

Thomas (Alex Cranmer) and Anthony (Tim Spears) have been together for years, but now they are struggling with Anthony’s grueling battle with AIDS. Exhausted from treatments that don’t work and medicines that have more side effects than help, Anthony decides to take his own life as opposed to prolonging his slow painful death. Together with their friend Susanah (Martha Newman), the couple approaches a retired physician, Dr. Roberta Chapman (Paula Langton), who had recently stopped practicing medicine after having an anxiety attack during a routine surgery.  They ask for her medical help with their controversial endeavor.

Alex Cranmer as Thomas, Tim Spears as Anthony and Paula Langton as Doctor Chapman (Photo Credit: Stan Barouh)

Appalled at first, Dr. Chapman starts having second thoughts when she realizes the degree of pain and agony Anthony is in. Yet suicide is far from simple: you take a dosage too small – you just sleep it off. You gobble up too many pills – you throw up. And if your weakened intestinal walls can’t absorb enough barbiturates, you simply don’t die.

Slowly but surely, Dr. Chapman finds herself absorbed into Anthony’s ultimate undertaking, meticulously organized like an important business affair. She agrees to consult him on the amount of sedative he has to take, then how to take them “properly” until she is pushed to say “yes” to injecting him with morphine – but only if necessary at the final stage of his project. She even ends up playing a shrink to tearful Thomas, who can’t decide whether he wants to hold Anthony’s hand during his final moments or run far away and stick his head in the sand.

As the lethal day approaches, Dr. Chapman’s life shifts from comfortable routine to screaming nightmares – she is haunted by the same thoughts as everyone else involved: will she be viewed as a murderer or an angel of mercy?  And will the law ever understand the difference should its enforcement agents investigate Anthony’s demise? “The doorman knows me!” a panicked Dr. Chapman realizes two nights before the arranged apocalypse, “But I’ve promised Anthony – what can I do?” Legalities are hard on Thomas too: he is the sole heir of Anthony’s estate, so will he be considered an accomplice?

Non-traditional and moral-uprooting, the play challenges our society’s established norms of death, suicide and euthanasia – unexpectedly with a few milligrams of humor thrown into the bitter mix – a compliment to the playwright David Rabe who manages the intricate balance of dark and witty. With Anthony’s heartbreaking act of a terminally ill patient, A Question of Mercy makes us to reevaluate what we consider merciful. And as we follow him and the troubled trio of reluctant murderers-to-be through trials and tribulations to an unexpected culmination, the story ends with a surprising twist – just as we think life and death can shock us no more.

Perhaps the modern society will never be able to come to terms with the subject of euthanasia. Perhaps every human has to solve the question of mercy for himself. But what about the moral dilemmas faced by those who chose to be angels of mercy? Maybe that’s why Al Pacino played the part of Dr. Kevorkian in the recent HBO docudrama “You Don’t Know Jack.” I don’t know if he found the answers, but A Question of Mercy sure stirred up enough questions in its audience.

In his “Note from the Director”, Jim Petosa says that the team hoped to “share this one journey […] in the hope of stimulating conversation or individual musing.” I’d say, they succeeded.

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A QUESTION OF MERCY

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Becky Byers as Cynthia in The Little One

A somewhat hackneyed vampire genre gets an absolute and terrific makeover in James Comtois’s play, The Little One (directed by Pete Boisvert).

Cynthia (Becky Byers), a young, recently “turned” vampling, faces challenges in her new life after being bitten by a troubled male vampire who liked to “play with his food before he ate it” and who puts a wood stick through his heart shortly after, committing  vampacide.

Marie (Rebecca Comtois), a seasoned motherly vampiress takes Cynthia under her wing to teach the girl about rights and wrongs and dos and don’ts of her new brutal and biting world. After a short crash course on the holistic approach to hunting, feeding and survival, Marie sends her fledgling off to be presented to Gogol – a tattooed, mean and nasty skinhead, who governs the vampiredom by his own rules. Gogol plays a cruel trick on Cynthia, telling her she failed the test and would be put to sleep. Scared, Cynthia puts up a furious fight, suddenly discovering how strong she is even by vampire standards, breaks a leg off an old wooden chair and kills one of Gogol’s goons. Gogol cites Cynthia her rights as “Thou should not kill thou’s own kind,” and puts her in the vault for two years – a relatively mild misdemeanor- type rebuke for an immortal creature who despises light and doesn’t know what to do with all that lifetime she’s got on her hands.

Marie patiently sits outside the vault until Cynthia’s sentence ends – she once had been in a vault herself for twenty years so she wants her unfortunate juvenile delinquent to know there’s a kind soul waiting for her. But when Cynthia is released, she angrily refuses Marie’s support and takes off on her own. She misses her old life so she tries to return to her mother and friends, but she can only see them after dusk, she doesn’t do too well within the proximity of her mother’s crucifix, plus refrigerated blood tastes horribly. No wander Cynthia finally gives up and returns to her adoptive Mama Vampiress.

The play cleverly educates us about the challenges and dilemmas of a vampire’s life, which, by Marie’s definition are nothing to be ashamed of – “It’s just biology.” Some of Marie’s friends have a different opinion. Sergei (Christopher Yustin), a typical intellectual Russian with a philosophical bent (who has his Russian act down to a tee – the accent, the demeanor, and even the way of standing too close to the person he talks to) argues that while vampires are indeed evil creatures, “they are not noble, but not un- noble either.” The meaning of that statement becomes clearer as we learn more about this peculiar blood-sucking nation that battles its own political issues, greed and quests for power, some of which are solved by a wooden stick through the heart. As time goes on and centuries fly, Cynthia finds out that in addition to the long chain of corpses left behind, vampires also have bodies in the closet – Gogol and Marie including. And when things suddenly take an unexpected turn and she looses her guardian vampiress’ protection, she realizes she may have crossed Gogol’s path simply by being Marie’s little one.

With professionally staged fights by Qui Nguyen, beautifully implemented ominous lighting by Daniel Winters and portentous Goth-style costumes designed by Betsy Strong this two-hour show ends too soon, like a good book that you wanted to keep reading. Beautifully incarnated by the entire bloodthirsty cast, the alternate reality unwraps itself, pulling us into Cynthia’s journey, a mix of sweet innocence and vicious temper, acted so wickedly well that we root for her rather than our own kind. The Little One is a play that kidnaps you from modern day East Village reality and drops you into the vampire’s den with total immersion – similar to how J.K. Rowling throws her readers into her mysterious and magical universe, parallel to yet interconnected with our own.

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