The Shape She Makes

Jonathan Bernstein and Susan Misner have created a resonant and dynamic work with "The Shape She Makes," playing through April 27 at Oberon.

"The Shape She Makes" is an intelligent, deeply felt hybrid of theater and dance, relying on both forms to the benefit of both. The stories (there are two of them, told in parallel) are simple enough: In the first story, an angry single mother, Louise (Misner, who also choreographs), works at a bar, brings home occasional guys, and tends -- in a more or less perfunctory way -- to the needs of her gifted daughter, Quincy (Sydney K. Penny). When one of Louise's one-night stands, Henry (Michael Balderrama), expresses an interest in sticking around and not simply being cast aside -- as is Louise's usual M.O. -- she gives him half a chance, but only because Quincy's father Bernard (Se�n Martin Hingston) has abruptly ere-entered the picture.

The second story is, at first, much more obscure. A part-time substitute teacher named Ms. Calvin (Finnerty Steeves) takes a new job at a school that could use her services on a full-time basis. But Ms. Calvin isn't interested in more hours; her aging mother (Misner plays this role, as well) needs her attention. There are other reasons for her recalcitrance, as we soon find out; introducing herself to the class, Ms. Calvin starts off her first day by writing a list of fat-shaming pejoratives on the blackboard and asking her students to add to it with insults of their own. (It makes for a teaching moment when one student can't quite figure out how to spell "wide load.") Ms. Calvin, that substitute teacher: Cool, collected, with a real personality, and fun to be around. Until, that is, the class -- incited by a science lesson that quickly goes over their heads -- start to badger her with questions; the moment too many voices start calling out for her all at once, Ms. Calvin shuts down.

Underneath these straightforward stories is a thoughtfully explored conundrum. Why aren't human problems more like the mathematical variety -- solvable, amenable to reason, given not just to answers but to definitively correct answers?

That's the core of everyone's pain and bewilderment. Bernard, an alcoholic, confesses to Quincy that he needed to leave the family in order to crack the riddle of himself; Quincy, though even more brilliant at math than her father, is thrilled just to have him back and wants to keep him. Ms. Calvin, for her part, is only one of a handful of people ever to attain a perfect score on a prestigious math exam; asked to write a speech, she fumbles headlong into an equation she finds she cannot solve -- one concerning human relationships and communication -- and resorts, for the first time in her life, to drinking. ("Did I try vodka?" she asks the bemused barkeep, as a long night of systematic imbibing drags by.)

This isn't he stuff of musicals, but then again "The Shape She Makes" isn't a musical in the usual sense. Nor is it a play in the ordinary way. The show uses dance and music to deepen its most viscerally powerful moments. In one bravura flashback sequence to Bernard and Louise's marriage, there's an episode of choreography that sketches out how the relationship fades and crumbles, and the participants along with it; Louise clings fiercely to her man, holding on with all she's got until there's literally nothing left to grasp onto. It's a stab to the heart; Louise's heartbreak is poignant, but her lingering, insurmountable bitterness in the years that follow is tragic.

A company of ten performers take on multiple roles, from secondary characters to furniture. (There's a moment during which a refrigerator, mimed by two dancers, literally forces Ms. Calvin to over-eat.) The movement is stylized, but not precious; neither is it exaggerated for the sake of hyperbole. It is, however, frankly erotic, passionate, and sometimes stricken with pathos and loss. Misner is a force to be reckoned with both as a choreographer and as a performer (she has a role on the cable TV spy drama "The Americans"). Her partner, Jonathan Bernstein, wrote and directed.

Sara Brown's scenic design works with the existing space, incorporating Oberon's own permanent furnishings; the bar where Louise works is also Oberon's bar (for which reason there is no drinks service during the show, so arrive early if you wish to enjoy a cocktail). A sliding screen helps turn the space into a variety of settings, and serves also to host the projections that add to the play's narrative. (Designer Darrel Maloney creates mash-ups of journal entries and complex mathematical formulae, including physics equations and what look like proofs drawn from Newton's "Optics.")

At 90 minutes, the play doesn't have the run time to address all the characters in depth; Henry, portrayed with sympathetic charm by Balderrama, disappears once the plot no longer needs him. Bernard similarly disappears -- though his impact is still felt. At its heart, however, this is a fiercely imagined portrait of a mother and daughter and the damage they each suffer, much of it at each other's hands. As much as the characters are rooted in the mathematics of the physical universe -- not a bad choice, for a play that incorporates such an ardent, lusty style of dance -- the play's text and subtext are all about the kind of tight orbital mechanics that lock people into destructive, harrying harmonics of emotional pathology.

"The Shape She Makes" continues though April 27 at Oberon, located at 2 Arrow Street near Harvard Square. For tickets and more information lease visit AmericanRepertoryTheater.org or phone 617-547-8300.