Forum Theatre offers a thoughtful comedy that follows the link between the words we use and the world that they create. George, a professional linguist (the multi-colored monologist Mitchell Hébert), preserves dying languages on tape, tracking down their last native speakers. Unfortunately, at home, relations with his wife Mary (the rock-steady Nanna Ingvarsson) are less successful: incapable of converting his love to words, George’s emotions are bracketed by quotation marks.
One of George’s interview subjects explains forcefully to him that the decay of a spoken language does not lead to the disappearance of a way of life; rather, it is the other way around, the disappearing world causing the language’s vanishing. And yet playwright Julia Cho leaves the question for us to decide, as the play often suggests the contrary, especially on the micro scale. George and Mary’s communication gap is neatly echoed by the argument between interview subjects Alta and Resten, a married couple and the last speakers of a vaguely north-central Eurasian tongue known for its musicality; their spat culminates in a mutual silent treatment. Covering several ensemble roles as well as those of Alta and Resten are Kerri Rambow and Edward Christian, and they do a fine job with each of them.
The play is enlivened by a few quirky breakings of the fourth wall, most notably the group Esperanto lesson that opens the second act.
- The Language Archive, by Julia Cho, directed by Jessica Burgess, Forum Theatre, Silver Spring, Md.