Theatre review: People Without History

If you don’t do your research before you see Richard Maxwell’s People Without History, you’ll have the same response that most of the audience did on the night I saw it: “What was that play actually about?”

You can’t really deduce the setting or meaning from just watching the play, so reading about it beforehand achieves a new level of importance. The play is ostensibly set during the 15th century Battle of Shrewsbury, but it has a much more anonymous and timeless feel. The Battle of Shrewsbury is the linchpin of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I, which Maxwell directed at BAM five years ago. Soldiers Owain, Mendace and Rhobert march their prisoners Blunt and Sheriff to a makeshift prison after a devastating battle. They try to piece together their memories of the battle, but they’ve either forgotten or suppressed most everything. Enter Alice, a healer, who cannot heal what ails these men.

But from simply viewing the play, all you know is that these men, dressed in chain mail and red long johns, have just been through a battle of some sort, that some of them are prisoners, and that their speech and syntax resembles that of PTSD sufferers. The language is not 15th century English, French or Welsh, it’s a stunted version of modern American English (typical for Maxwell’s plays). There are no references to landmarks, historical personages, the time frame, or anything else that might ground this play in the concrete. In a sense, it’s a strangely accurate way of portraying what 15th century Englishman must have felt like after a battle—unmoored, lost, lacking basic information like whether they even won or lost, and too tired to care. Lara Furniss’s design, consisting of three wheeled scrims that serve alternately as backdrops and prison walls, highlight the physical and spiritual barrenness at the center of this play. The small cast exhibits an oddly moving empathy for their characters; their collective humanity is what keeps this from being a play about automatons.

Richard Maxwell (Caveman, Boxing 2000) is known for his brief, atonal plays, usually about the dead, numbed center of everyday life, about a Beckettian existential despair. (In fact, the soldiers’ endless querying and emotional detachment is very Waiting for Godot.) People Without History fits neatly into the Maxwell oeuvre, albeit in a historical context. It’s best not to get too caught up in the actions or the meaning of the play, because you’ll leave feeling slightly confused and empty. Instead, enjoy the subtle arrhythmic poetry of Maxwell’s dialogue, the centerpiece of all his plays.


Written by Richard Maxwell
Directed by Brian Mendes
With Tory Vasquez (Alice), Rafael Sanchez (Anonymous), Bob Feldman (Blunt), Tom King (Owain), Alex Delinois (Sheriff), Jim Fletcher (Rhobert) and Pete Simpson (Mendace)
Design: Lara Furniss
Running Time: 90 minutes with no intermission
New York City Players at The Performing Garage, 33 Wooster Street; 212-479-0808
Tickets $20
Thursday through Sunday, 8 pm
March 19 – April 5, 2009