Michael Hollinger is the respected author of eleven full-length plays, including Opus and Red Herring, and he writes about serious issues, often historic — plagiarism, corruption among the priesthood, cold-war witch hunts for Russian spies — while leavening his stories with a great deal of humor. His latest is different. Under the Skin is a sober look at family strains that are aggravated when a man is in renal failure and needs a kidney transplant.
We see middle-aged Lou who seems to be dying and seeks a kidney from his only child. Then we meet his daughter Raina who is bitter and resentful about the recent death of her mother, which she blames on her dad. Strong stuff, set in the present time, and hard to joke about.
To relieve the tension Hollinger breaks the fourth wall and has all of his characters talk directly to the patrons. They do this to justify their actions and to argue among each other. The device amplifies the many disagreements between father and daughter which led to their estrangement.
Lou, a frequently-absent parent, devoted more to his business than to his wife and daughter. He was also an unfaithful husband, and he and Raina’s mother divorced. Yet Lou, as sympathetically played by Douglas Rees, is a well-meaning and likeable guy.
Raina, as intensely portrayed by Julianna Zinkel, is a very angry young woman. In her grief over the death of the only parent she was close to, she has moved to another state and changed her last name. She resents her father tracking her down and asking her to donate one of her kidneys. Raina is desperately needy, judgmental and keeps a catalogue of her father’s mistakes. She has harbored resentment since long before her mother’s death. Her cold-hearted attitude indicates how difficult a journey towards reconciliation will be, and raises questions if it ever will be.
Jarrell (Biko Eisen-Martin) is a young man who knows Lou and who befriends Raina. He has never had a dad, and he has differences with his mother, Marlene (Alice M. Gatling) yet he respects her, providing an effective contrast. Gatling also is superb as Lou’s surgeon and as a barista in the hospital’s coffee shop, while Eisen-Martin doubles as one of Lou’s nurses.
Raina’s young daughter is an off-stage voice. In one scene we hear her from the next room; in another she talks with her mom on the phone. Both of these incidents demonstrate a lack of communication. Then Raina calls her child “asshole.” There’s surely going to be trouble between these two generations, as well.
Act I ends with the revelation of a complicating factor. Hollinger’s second act unfurls with more action and more surprises. Shifts in characters’s feelings are well-motivated and accompanied by wit and wordplay. Even though hints are given earlier, the denouement is still unanticipated, as well as startling and satisfying. The last 50 minutes of this play are thoughtful and funny and as fine as anything written by this accomplished playwright. Terrence Nolen’s direction is simple and straightforward.
