Lost and Found

At the beginning of Gone Missing, the masterful music/comedy/sketch piece by the wired and wacky troupe The Civilians, a voice announces that the material was culled from “interviews with people in New York City and in the United States of America.” That subtle use of “and” is so telling—snidely inferring that NYC is, indeed, not quite the same as (or even part of) the rest of the USA.

The pithy intro was the perfect tongue-in-cheek opening to this fascinating, sardonic show, in which the six actors take on a batch of personas of people who have lost various things in NYC and elsewhere (I had to laugh at a woman recounting the loss of a doll in Iowa’s Amana Colonies, where I also vacationed as a child).

The piece begins with its sizzling title number—the suit-clad, androgynous performers move through slick and punchy choreography with such presence and precision that it gave me goosebumps.

Emily Ackerman quickly followed this up with the lush and torchy “The Only Thing Missing Is You”—a striking and impassioned lament for a lost romance that effortlessly calls up old Hollywood films of the 1940s. Purring with her sexy-scratchy voice, Ackerman struts with an irresistible combination of fire and reserve.

But although the show opens with such promise, the rest of the material never moves out of its teaser-phase. To be sure, the character studies are each strong and convincing, but I wished that the writing could become more meaty and juicy. And if those adjectives seem to indicate that I was hungry, that’s because I was. The saucy, irreverent opening scenes whet my appetite for substance, but the writing, while often sharp and witty, remains on the safer surface of many topics touched on by these evocative characters.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that—many a show gets by on consistently excellent fluffy material. But these actors (and their confident director Steve Cosson, who also wrote much of the show) are so superb that you can’t help longing for them to plunge into material that would show them off to their fullest potential. And “Gone Missing,” while entertaining and mildly provocative, eventually feels like an expanse of wasted resources.

Michael Friedman’s music and lyrics are especially fine and provide the show’s many high points. In “The Only Thing Missing Is You,” Ackerman despairs, “If Barbie has Ken/why do I have rien?” In these simple tunes and potent lyrics, Friedman conveys both humor and pathos. In “Hide & Seek,” a young girl’s memory of hiding amid her mother’s pretty blouses in a closet, Colleen Werthman wonders, “Why is no one seeking me?”

So what have people lost? Everything from rings to pets to gold teeth. One recurring character, an amiable cop played by the excellent Stephen Plunkett, describes what is lost or missing from the dead bodies he recovers. He describes the gruesome details with a “Can you believe it?” grin and a half-hearted shrug, which belie the seriousness of these disturbing scenes (which have clearly disturbed him a bit as well). But “You gotta laugh, right?” he reflexively asks after each description. “Or else …” (He mimes drinking alcohol.) One imagines it could get much worse than that.

The Civilians avoid making any overt political or mock-serious statements, and the poignancy of these lost things eventually comes into focus over the course of the show. Things are merely “shadows” or “echoes”—and, late in the show, the cast lightly references the ways in which we try to possess each other in relationships. But whether a relationship, an earring, or a rag doll, our possessions can both rule and possess us. Gone Missing hints at what these things can come to mean. “It was a small thing,” an elderly woman sighs, “But it was big because I loved it.”

Photo Credit: Sara Krulwich, The New York Times