Review: 'Dying City' illustrates the elusive nature of closure after soldier's death

Nothing is entirely what it seems for quite a while in Christopher Shinn's lauded 90-minute drama "Dying City," now in a haunting local premiere at Seattle Public Theater. And no one is exactly who you think they are.

What is clear: Kelly (Shana Bestock) is a therapist, and the widow of Craig (Chris Maslen), a soldier and a student. And Craig is the identical twin of Peter (also Chris Maslen), a self-defeating actor who shows up out of the blue one evening at Kelly's apartment, a year after Craig's death in Iraq under murky circumstances.

For more clarity than that, you will need to ponder this shifting, troubling, yet rewarding waking dream of a play, staged with acute attention to nuance by John Vreeke.

As Bestock's crumpled form and glazed eyes make clear, Kelly has been through hell. And though she welcomes the anxious, chatty Peter, something is palpably wrong between them — but what?

That remains something of a mystery — as do so many elusive elements of the past, despite the earnest attempts of an intelligent, analytical person like Kelly, to order and understand them. Peter, who is gay, is carrying around his brother's e-mails from Iraq in a backpack. He wants to discuss them with Kelly, to force an epiphany, some closure. She wants to evade them. Between their wary, circular conversations, Kelly flips through her private memories of Craig's last night before his Iraq War deployment — like someone thumbing through a photo album, desperately searching for a face she can recognize.

Shinn slowly teases out the painful secrets of this human triangle. And with flashbacks, he assembles a devastating portrait of male misogyny, self-conflict and aggression, and female self-delusion.

If this all seems a bit vague, it is because "Dying City" is shattering in its impact but, for the most part, subtle in its effects and complex in its analysis.

A violent childhood, a deadly terror attack, a duplicitous war, the limitations of psychology — they all collide and collude, in a tragedy Peter is clumsily trying to reconstruct. And Kelly is finally allowing herself to absorb.

Vreeke respects and enhances the many little shadings and shocks of this tale, with small blasts of heavy-metal music, fraught silences and tonal lighting.

And the performances he draws from his two-actor cast are exemplary. Bestock does not waste a gesture, a sigh. Intelligent and depleted, she's a traumatic shock victim with Peter — and with Craig, a caring, engaged but ultimately battered (emotionally, at least) wife.

But it's Maslen's double turn that keeps you in a viselike grip. He's a big man, with an imposing presence. He nails the different cultures and sexual orientations of Peter and Craig without resorting to cliché. He also shows us how alike they are at the molten core.

The instant when Craig finally weeps with bottled-up shame and uncontrollable fury is almost unbearably intense. Which is just as it should be, when one looks hard at a harsh, insoluble truth.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com