Madagascar at Next Theatre Company | Theater review

OUT OF TIME Weber, Roman and Vander Broek, from left, are displaced.

Photo: Michael Brosilow

Though it’s named for the island nation off Africa’s eastern coast and set in a hotel room in Rome, Madagascar only hints at the outward focus of Rogers’s later works such as The Overwhelming. The three characters in this 2002 piece are Americans of privilege who view Rome as a museum or a tourist destination and Madagascar as a fantasyland. This intriguing, tightly constructed mystery plumbs the vagaries of familial and romantic love.

Though it’s named for the island nation off Africa’s eastern coast and set in a hotel room in Rome, Madagascar only hints at the outward focus of Rogers’s later works such as The Overwhelming. The three characters in this 2002 piece are Americans of privilege who view Rome as a museum or a tourist destination and Madagascar as a fantasyland. This intriguing, tightly constructed mystery plumbs the vagaries of familial and romantic love.

The characters speak to us from the same room at different times. Five years ago, Lilian (Roman) recalls bringing her now-adult children here on vacation; June (Vander Broek) is a young American working in Rome as a tour guide, whom we encounter a few days before the present, represented by Nathan (Weber), an academic economist. The playwright parcels out the details of their ties so carefully that I won’t spoil them, except to say they each have an interest in another, unseen American, who’s gone missing.

Senior, who directed The Overwhelming here two years ago to great acclaim, admirably brings a gimlet eye to the proceedings. Her smart trio of actors handles Rogers’s modern-life observations about air travel and cocktail parties with brio. And Weber, Roman and Vander Broek add tantalizing layers to their characters: Each of them, like all of us, wants to present themselves as free of guilt about what’s gone awry in their relationships with those around them, but each betrays their doubt.