Mickle Maher's Song About Himself is (almost) his best playyet

While doing some online research on Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, a poem Mickle Maher cribsand corrupts to singular effect in his nearly perfect new play Song About Himself, I clicked onto awebsite called articlemyriad.com, which purports to be "the authoritative source for original andinsightful articles and ideas on a broad range of topics related to the humanities." Some unseenroving intelligence--the one that skulks behind nearly every website, throwing up enticements toclick on things other than what you've sought out--suggested a different articlemyriad essay,unrelated to Whitman.

I clicked and got this: "An analysis of the novel 'Heart of Darkness' by Joseph Conrad as well as someof the important themes in 'Heart of Darkness' by Conrad for that matter as well as the novel 'TheDeath of Ivan Ilych' by Tolstoy leads the reader to conclude that it is and 'Heart of Darkness' byJoseph Conrad that is the more modernist of the two."

The Whitman article I finally found was also unhelpful, although it appears to have been revelatoryto a previous reader, who commented, "Appreciation for this Article.We are facing commonproblem.and i locate finally Remedy."

It's impossible to know if the Internet's allegedly democratizing effect diminishes the potency andcogency of the English language, or if it merely reveals what dreadful writers most of us have alwaysbeen. In any case, the massive jumble of tortured, superficial, solipsistic gibberish that increasinglypasses for meaningful expression can't bode well for our species. Insert anxious-face emoticon.

Maher amplifies the problem to absurd yet sobering proportions. In a dystopian future, the Web,overfilled with catch phrases, trite idioms, smiley faces, and selfies, has become the sole repositoryof all information and language. It's where the world narrates and comprehends its own existence.But viruses and malware have corrupted all content, rendering humanity unable to understand orexpress much of anything. People pass their days mumbling in one another's general direction,slogging through streets perpetually laden with slush.

From the murk emerges Carol, perhaps the only person remaining who can form intelligiblesentences. She's desperate for human contact--conversations with her hot plate don't cut it--andshe's received a mysterious invitation to join YouSpake, a social media site on what's left of the Web(now called "the Weed"). She must first buy a musical instrument and learn a jazz lick, the sonicpassword she'll play into her "leaf-sized tray" to gain admittance to YouSpake. Once she's in, shefinds the "unnamed Host or Hostess," an automated monitor desperate to re-create the old Internetwhere people "spoke like gods." To Carol's great dismay, no one else has joined YouSpake. Perhapsshe's the first. Or perhaps the Host/Hostess keeps others out, a possibility rendered more likelywhen Tod, a hopelessly inarticulate mailman, slips inadvertently into YouSpake. And every fewminutes, the site crashes.

In typical fashion, Maher creates a world of ridiculous, ominous inadequacy, given mesmerizingexpression in this Theater Oobleck premiere. Making sense of Maher's stage world is no easy trick,as the script is nothing but transcripts of voice-command chat logs--and reads much like thesyntactical garble of articlemyriad.com. The three characters never quite speak as themselves butinstead perform the instantaneous record of what some unidentified intelligence has deemed to betheir words and sounds. Thus they can't laugh or sob or even cough; they can merely say "laughs" or"sobs" or "coughs." When no one says anything, the Host/Hostess can't help but say, "There is apause." It's a decidedly tricky world to comprehend at first--exacerbated by Maher's insistence therebe no set--but once you're in, it's a rich, resounding, disturbingly familiar place.

For 90 minutes, Maher keeps Carol and the Host/Hostess at cross-purposes. Carol wants nothing but"back-and-forth" with another human, while the Host/Hostess needs Carol only to "lengthy post," thefirst step toward rebuilding coherence in the world. Both of their aims are necessary to rescuehumanity, yet they're mutually exclusive, giving their fraught interactions an aching urgency.Throughout, Maher borrows specific lines and images from Song of Myself--ironically, a workfundamentally about self-reliance--as well as Whitman's thematic spirals, intoxicating rhythms, andcircuitous plainspokenness, all rendered with great clarity and warmth by Oobleck's cast: GuyMassey, Colm O'Reilly, and Diana Slickman, who, astonishingly, work without a director, as Oobleckhas done for 26 years.

Maher hasn't found an adequate ending yet; his current Twilight Zone-esque twist leads down aconceptual cul-de-sac. But of his many artful, resonant plays, this one has the potential to eclipsethem all. v

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