<b>DECONSTRUCTION</b> Canterbury Woods Performing Arts Center/First Look Buffalo SpeakupWNY | Buffalo NY and Buffalo News

Through April 6
DECONSTRUCTION Canterbury Woods Performing Arts Center/First Look Buffalo

By Augustine Warner

Life is a series of stages, some good and some bad.
Certainly, most of us think of, oh, 17-27 as good years.
Often, succeeding years bring complications in life or health.
And, as the succeeding years pile up, complications can continue to pile up.
That’s what Adam Hahn’s “Deconstruction” is about.
Jacob (Brandon Williamson) has invited Naomi (Brooke Goergen) to spend the weekend with him in a fancy hotel.
You know, room service at all hours and that.
What the Brits call a “dirty weekend” seems attractive.
However, there are complications which pile up in the fancy hotel room, from Naomi’s status as a recently divorced mom of four, slated to start chemo for breast cancer on Monday, to Jacob’s status as a widower from an open marriage who lost his wife to breast cancer a year before.
The pair may have been high school friends, they aren’t close and neither knows what has happened to the other over the years to their current 43.
Jacob is casually dressed for, maybe, some clubbing.
Naomi is an image of very conservative dark clothing, down to her dress covering her ankles.
She gradually tells Jacob of growing up and continuing to live in a very conservative evangelical church which tries to grab the family members very young and keep the daughters tightly controlled for life.
That includes a hard pass from the church’s youth minister.
He pleads with her not to tell anyone because it would wreck his career.
She agrees.
Naomi also tells him of her husband’s tacky affair with a woman in his office and with her concerns she isn’t the only.
Because this is a two-character play, director Lara D. Haberberger has the two performers moving around a lot, Jacob enthusiastically and Naomi circling around, lamenting her life in her church and that cheating husband.
Jacob and wife Claire had a long list of partners over their marriage.
The only rule is not to bring the latest partners into the marital home.
He has also lived through her years of metastatic cancer until she died.
This is all unfolding in the hotel room, as they shift toward really getting into the bed and then back away.
There are deep psychological scars, particularly with Naomi.
She has dealt with the trauma of her husband’s romance at work and the new fiancée’s increasing control over her children.
Both have sorry stories, with the weekend’s status as a somewhat bright light.
For Naomi and Jacob, this is a chance to move to a new stage in life although her need to protect her children from the way she was raised and to deal with a potentially lethal cancer make if pretty complicated, as Jacob’s history in his open marriage make any long-term pairing unlikely.
Haberberger, Goergen and Williamson create a dynamic production of Hahn’s play, on Sarah Waechter’s sparse set.
“Deconstruction” is an interesting mix of social issues, personal tragedy and religious autocracy, all relevant to today.
Clearly, your reaction to the play might well depend on your view of the content, like Naomi’s accounts of her life inside an (unidentified) religion, although you can guess what’s probably involved.
The same is true of Jacob’s marital history.
Still, “Deconstruction” remains a fascinating look at two people who don’t want to just give in to life’s tragedies.