Is This a Room at NC Stage Co.
As the house lights fade when Tina Satter’s play Is This a Room begins at North Carolina Stage Co., a neutral voice in the darkness announces: “On June 3, 2017, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation served a search warrant at the home of Reality Leigh Winner. What follows is a word-for-word transcription of the recording of that interaction. Some elements of the transcription have been redacted by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
When the stage lights come up, three casually dressed people are standing on a bare stage at a distance from one another. The woman is in cut-off jeans and an untucked white blouse. One of the men is wearing a jacket with FBI lettering. The other has on a sports shirt.
A conversation is in progress: “This is my partner, Wally Taylor. . . .Hey, how are you? . . . Good. How you doing? . . .Good. How's your day today? . . . Uh, it's pretty good. Just got some groceries.” A social visit from the FBI? The dialogue sounds very natural, full of hems and haws, throat-clearings, and nose-blowings.
Over the next 70 intermission-free minutes, this seemingly mundane encounter turns into a taut cat-and-mouse game as FBI agents Justin Garrick (Willie Repoley) and Wallace Taylor (Jeff Benninghofen) interrogate Winner (Justine Gottschalk), a 25-year-old former Air Force linguist and translator for a National Security Agency contractor. Did she remove a classified document from her workplace? Did she send it to a media outlet? What was her motive? Will they get her to confess?
The questioning begins casually — purely voluntary, they tell her. They just want to get her side of the story. They even seem considerate. Should she put away her groceries? Let the dog and cat out?
But gradually their tone tightens. “Do you have any weapons in the house?” “Have you ever searched for information beyond your need to know?” “Have you ever discussed classified material with anyone who lacks clearance?”
The conversation oscillates back to the casual: “How’s the neighborhood?” “Are you planning to stay?” “Have you had any issues since you moved in?”
Every now and then, lighting designer Erin Bell signals a DOJ redaction by darkening the stage and shining a garish light. It’s pink when the agents are speaking, blue when Reality is talking. It flashes back and forth sometimes and we hear unintelligible words. During these pauses, sound designer Mark Scearce adds an ominous drone.
About 45 minutes in, the agents’ tone turns menacing. They know a lot more than they’re telling her, they say, and they know she knows it. Lying to an FBI agent, they warn, is not the right road to go down.
If you come to Is This a Room with prior knowledge of the Reality Winner case, you know how this encounter will end. But as with many good dramas, it isn’t the outcome that delivers the biggest surprises — it’s the intriguing ways the director and actors get us to the ending.
In the skillful staging by director Charlie Flynn-McIver, Gottschalk’s Winner, Repoley’s Garrick, and Benninghofen’s Taylor find a whole repertoire of tics, nervous habits, and mannerisms that perfectly match the naturalism of the playwright’s verbatim record.
Gottschalk twists one leg around the other; her hands fidget. Repoley scratches his back and blows his nose. (Did he really clear the snot with his fingers and fling it on the floor?) Both Repoley and Benninghofen give these Augusta, Ga., agents a good-ol’-boy Southern sheriff vibe, complete with incessant gum chewing.
The agents’ movements appear random, but Flynn-McIver’s guiding eye is evident as they circle and stalk Winner. His choreography visually mirrors the now-friendly, now-probing ebb and flow of the conversation. Both visually and verbally, they are closing in on her.
Rounding out the cast, Cory Broughton’s Unknown Agent adds to the menace of the proceedings as he walks back and forth, removing boxes from Reality's house and whispering with Garrick and Taylor. At one point, Broughton stops, looks around the bare stage with a puzzled look, and asks, "Is this a room?" The audience chuckles with a similar puzzlement to learn the source of the play's mysterious title.
For this viewer, the NC Stage production of Is This a Room deliberately leaves ambiguous many questions. Why did an experienced Air Force veteran, fluent in three languages — sophisticated enough to get a security clearance — not see the trap the agents were setting for her? Why didn’t she ask to have a lawyer present?
At the end, Flynn-McIver brings Gottschalk downstage center, facing the audience. The play’s unanswered questions read poignantly on the actor’s face: “What have I done? Why did I do it?”
Is This a Room runs through November 23. For tickets and more information, visit ncstage.org.
(Photo courtesy of NC Stage Co.)
