A Funny and Sad Look at Facts, Myths and Spin

by Charles Isherwood

The elusiveness of truth in a culture swamped with stuff that looks, sounds and smells like information - but may be something a little more suspicious - is the serious subject of "(I Am) Nobody's Lunch," a merrily unserious, vaudevillian romp through the anxious chatter of contemporary America, which opened last night at the 59E59 Theaters.

Performed by the Civilians, a much buzzed-about downtown theater troupe, this informal sociological study recast as a cabaret has been thoroughly revamped (and modestly renamed) after its run last fall at P.S. 122 under the title "Nobody's Lunch." Snappy, scrappy and performed with deadpan razzmatazz by a young cast of six, the latest model is a funny, searching, at times plaintive look at the dangerous blurring of fact and myth in American culture and the unease that is its natural byproduct.

Written and directed by Steven Cosson, with perky pastiche songs by Michael Friedman, the production is the latest entry in the growing documentary theater movement, which has snowballed in recent years, possibly in reaction to a phenomenon the show explores, the growing mistrust of "traditional" sources of news. "That's why I stopped watching the news," someone whines in the show. "They tell you one thing and then they tell you something else." The nerve!

How and why we come to believe what we believe is the large question being explored with a wink in this collage of material culled from interviews with an odd assortment of Americans, ranging from soldiers standing vigil at Grand Central Terminal to a fellow who believes his body is inhabited by a celestial being who has useful tips on dispelling the fog of fear that has enveloped the country since 9/11.

The smaller questions posed by the Civilians in their researches range from major (moral justification of the Iraq invasion) to minor (sexuality of a certain gleaming movie star), and the responses have been mixed and matched to create a kaleidoscopic peek into the American mindscape, with a distinct accent on the absurdity thereof.

Caitlin Miller, a wonderfully droll mimic, plays several women named Jessica Lynch, all asked to describe the dramaturgy behind their namesake's misadventure in Iraq. "Wait, are they saying there was no Jessica Lynch?" asks one. "Or, oh, just that maybe it didn't happen the way they said it did. I don't know. I've never heard that. But, you know, I wouldn't be surprised."

That last phrase - emblematic of the exasperated blend of apathy and suspicion that is a recurring motif in the show - is a refrain in one of Mr. Friedman's ably structured little ditties. The songs provide a soft underscoring of melancholy that deepens the picture of general cluelessness that predominates, slipping some sympathy into a snarky recipe.

In a solo performed by Quincy Tyler Bernstine, the highly charged question of trading civil liberties for security is turned into an old-school, need-me-a-strong-man lament: "I just want to sit back and be told, to be controlled, to be secure. ..." A tart Kurt Weill knockoff, "Song of Progressive Disenchantment," compares the search for love to the search for truth, both ending in disillusionment, natch.

Mr. Cosson and his collaborators are not just survey takers presenting their results dispassionately, of course, and they can be legitimately accused of drawing conclusions as facile as they are clever. Implicitly condemning Americans' willingness to ingest spin, they're busy spinning their "data" themselves to maximize its entertainment value. Voices of reason - a harried young worker in the government's immigration department stands out - get less air time than the more amusing voices of near or actual lunacy.

All good fun, up to a point, but sometimes the juxtaposition of testimony is troubling. One sequence features a reading from a Newsweek magazine article about the plight of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Arab descent whose reports of being abducted in Macedonia and held at a United States prison in Afghanistan have been corroborated. It's immediately followed by a reading from a book called "Trance Formation of America: The True Life Story of a C.I.A. Mind Control Slave," in which the author says that an L. L. Bean outlet is a "front cover for C.I.A. activity" and that she was sexually abused by a host of well-known public figures.

Ha, ha. But wait a second, what exactly is the point being made by the twinning of these excerpts? Surely not that both narratives are equally credible or equally significant. Nor can it be argued that both are held to be true by an equal number of Americans; "Trance Formation" is hardly a best seller. It's the Civilians who have juxtaposed these stories, to admittedly surreal effect. But it's worth asking whether, in doing so, they aren't becoming part of the problem. Placed in the right context, almost any truth can be made to seem false or absurd.

"(I Am) Nobody's Lunch" does not, of course, aim to be a sober or thorough study of the current state of the cultural discourse; it's more a cheeky sidelong glance at its excesses, similar in attitude and methodology to "The Daily Show," and similarly tonic. Amusing as it is, it may be most memorable for the spotlight it beams on the atmosphere of fear and anxiety that has blanketed the country since 9/11 rattled our sense of complacency, the sense of uncertainty that inspires the urge to turn away from the big questions and take refuge in the diverting allure of the little ones.

Speaking of which, on the question of that movie star's sexual orientation, my friend's decorator knows his former assistant, and he says he's definitely gay.

(I Am) Nobody's Lunch

Written and directed by Steven Cosson; music and lyrics by Michael Friedman; sets by Andromache Chalfant; costumes by Sarah Beers; sound by Shane Rettig; lighting by Marcus Doshi; stage manager, Catherine Bloch; assistant stage manager, Robert Signom III; choreographer, Karinne Keithley. Presented by the Civilians, Mr. Cosson, artistic director; Kyle Gorden, producing director. At 59E59Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, Manhattan; (212) 279-4200. Through Feb. 5. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

WITH: Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Matt Dellapina, Brad Heberlee, Daoud Heidami, Caitlin Miller, Jennifer R. Morris and Andy Boroson, piano.

Photograph: Leslie Lyons
From left, Jennifer R. Morris, Brad Heberlee, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Matt Dellapina (on bed), Caitlin Miller and Daoud Heidami in "(I Am) Nobody's Lunch," which explores mistrust of traditional news sources.