At APT, ‘Tribes’ closes ranks around family dysfunction | Entertainment

There’s a certain pleasure in hate-watching a character, hollering in your living room at a villain who can’t hear you. Best to subdue these instincts at “Tribes,” an infuriating (and very good) play populated by extremely punchable people.

English playwright Nina Raine’s 2010 comedic drama, onstage in American Players Theatre’s indoor Touchstone space through Sept. 27, highlights the casual cruelty families do best.

For 20-something Billy (Joshua M. Castille), born deaf into a family of hearing narcissists, the family dinner table swirls like a tornado. John Langs’ hyper-specific, naturalistic direction boxes Billy out while he’s in the room. How can they be so oblivious? (Am I that oblivious?)

Billy’s parents and older siblings, failed-to-launch Ruth (Maggie Cramer) and mentally struggling Daniel (Casey Hoekstra), shout conversations at and over each other. The radio blares. People walk away while talking, or speak in an undertone.

“Join in! Have an argument!” encourages Billy’s father, Christopher (Jim DeVita), a textbook prig. Billy’s wine-gulping mother Beth (Colleen Madden) treats Billy like he’s simple, or a child. His brother does, too. Everyone’s very funny and cutting, in that “just telling the truth” way of a family where love lives a few layers down.

When Billy meets Sylvia (Lindsay Welliver), the daughter of deaf parents who is going deaf herself, his world begins to crack open. She teaches him sign language, which his family never learned, and takes him to Deaf events.

“There was an empty place at the table, and she came and sat down in it,” Billy says. “I was alone, and now I’m not.”

The inevitable confrontation — er, meeting — with Billy’s family goes about as well as anyone expects. Dad leads the charge, firing breathtakingly insensitive questions at Sylvia (“which is better, sign or speech?”). DeVita, as Christopher, is fearlessly hateful.

Sensing a threat, his family circles the wagons while Billy draws away. Christopher sneers at sign language but hauls out his laptop to practice Chinese, without headphones, at the kitchen table. Daniel is willing to sacrifice his brother’s relationship for his own security. (Hoekstra seems to physically shrink as Daniel’s psychosis worsens.)

Ruth’s reaction to Billy’s success as a forensic lip-reader is dismay. “What is wrong with me?” she cries. Cramer nails Ruth’s melodramatic childishness.

Langs, Castille and Welliver worked together on this play eight years ago, at ACT in Seattle, which may be part of why this production looks so lived-in. As Billy and Sylvia, Castille and Welliver wear their feelings outside of themselves, watchful and cautious. They’re wonderful to watch.

Jason Fassl designed the lighting and projections, which translate and add a touch of theatrical magic, notes appearing and fading as Sylvia plays “Clair de Lune” on the piano.

Fassl designed Christopher and Beth’s upper-class liberal living room, too, with a minute eye for detail: stacks of books, ceramic statues from trips abroad, framed posters and macrame wall art next to family photos. Even the refrigerator magnets appear deliberate.

“Tribes” goes inside a closed family system, not without love, that the members fiercely defend even though they’re all miserable.

But there are threads here about identity, and how much of who we are comes through in how we communicate. I think of Sanaz Toossi’s play “English,” about a group of Iranian students in an English as a second language class. In it, a character describes speaking only in her non-native language as living “in isolation from yourself.”

That’s Billy without people who understand him, in isolation. It’s also Billy without his family. May he, and we, never have to choose.

Lindsay Christians is the food and culture editor at the Cap Times. She earned a master’s degree in theater research from UW-Madison and has been a member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association since 2007. 

Email story ideas and tips to Lindsay at [email protected].

Please consider supporting Lindsay’s work by becoming a Cap Times member or sponsor. Sustaining local journalism in Madison depends on readers like you.