'The Dinosaurs' Off-Broadway review — time-bending new play shines through its quietest moments

Read our review of The Dinosaurs off Broadway, a new play written by Jacob Perkins and directed by Les Waters at Playwrights Horizons through March 1.

Summary

• The Dinosaurs tackles sobriety and storytelling through a single Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that actually merges over a decade's worth of meetings
• The show is dialogue-heavy but shines most in moments that are quiet and remain open to interpretation
• The show is recommended for fans of the ensemble cast that includes Elizabeth Marvel and Kathleen Chalfant; and of other media like the fellow Off-Broadway play Blackout Songs that explore themes surrounding alcoholism

It’s an understatement to apply the mindfulness adage of “being present” to the single, hourlong meeting of a women-focused Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship in playwright Jacob Perkins’ The Dinosaurs. You could hear a pin drop in the theatre at Playwrights Horizons.

Director Les Waters commands rapt attention as the play gradually unfolds. The play throws us into the middle of the attendees' conversations, picked up from last meetings, and each person's entrance shows us their character through body language and banter. Their cute alliterative names — Jane (April Matthis), Joan (Elizabeth Marvel), Janet (Mallory Portnoy), Joane (Maria Elena Ramirez), and Jolly (Kathleen Chalfant) — underline their synchronization. They have in-jokes (one attendee calls Joan and Joane “Joans,” an implicit acknowledgment of their similar-sounding names). Some characters repeat a word in sync, a symbol of long-forged rapports.

The potential newbie Buddy/Rayna (the name is applied interchangeably in the script; Keilly McQuail plays the character with fidgety apprehension) doesn’t quite assimilate. She represents those who linger at the fringes, in physical limbo too. We never see Buddy/Rayna seated among the circle, although we eventually learn of her integration into the fellowship. When Buddy/Rayna converses with Jane, their conversation starts as a banal one about baked goods. But by the time Buddy/Rayna shares that her relationship with a cupcake changed once she saw it was obviously “a cake in a cup,” you feel her clinging to this analogy to communicate her search for meaning and control.

We pick up on all the attendees’ frailty and mysteries. When Janet first tells her story, it’s up for speculation whether she is using metaphors to cover up her literal story, but we accept her account at face value. Joane’s eventual story counteracts a previous boast about her communicative relationship with her son. The Dinosaurs does not surge to any dramatic explosion, like Robert Icke’s recent Oedipus on Broadway with its onstage ticking clock, yet the meeting’s volunteer “spiritual timekeeper” calling out “one minute” elicits a more potent emotional impact. When time is up, the stories simply stop being told; they don't end. There lingers an ache for more time.

Time hovers around The Dinosaurs as a sleight of hand. Conversations gradually reveal the meeting as an amalgamation of several years' worth of meetings. The most blatant signal of time passage appears in the Yuki Link's fluorescent lighting, alternately cooling and warming. To say that there are time skips in The Dinosaurs is too facile, but "time travel” hits as overkill. It’s as if the future and past compress into the present, as if communal healing exists in a continuum.

There is a seventh elusive character: quiet. Thanks to Palmer Hefferan’s sound design clearly forefronting the dialogue, The Dinosaurs has rhythm even in mundane moments, like meeting agenda recaps and preamble revisions (a mission to be trans-inclusive gets a nod). We also watch stretches of ordinary action, such as assembling folding chairs, prepping donuts and coffee, and turning off a disruptive cell phone. These moments play as both realistic chores and exercises in patience for the audience until the next moment of human connection.

If the AA storytellers actively engage, The Dinosaurs also illustrates those who exist to listen. The audience doesn't witness everyone sharing a story. Some characters offer only fragments about themselves, whether through their behavior or whispers. A novice playwright or director would act on the impulse to expand or resolve, but The Dinosaurs commits to the feeling of leaving a room with an unspoken story suspended in the air.

The Dinosaurs summary

A women-focused Alcoholics Anonymous group of “Saturday Survivors” — Jolly, Joan, Jane, Janet, and Joane — assemble for weekly meetings and look for healing and connection in each other’s stories. Meanwhile, potential newcomer Buddy/Rayna contemplates fully joining the group.

What to expect at The Dinosaurs

Despite being a dialogue-filled play, The Dinosaurs may be the quietest show this season. The tranquilizing atmosphere ushers the audience into a meditative mood along with the group. If you have a discerning eye, you’ll spy a clock that remains frozen in dots’ no-frills scenic design, sequestered in a rental room multipurposed for dancing or rehearsing.

It may take a bit of mathematics absorb the blurring of past, present, and future in the proceedings, since the design and script eschew conventional announcements of traditional time skips (there's no interstitial music, intertitles, or flashy lighting). Seventy-five intermissionless minutes pass and yet contain an eon.

What audiences are saying about The Dinosaurs

Audiences have taken to online platforms like the Mezzanine app to share their thoughts on The Dinosaurs.

• “I am still thinking about The Dinosaurs… It’s come to this room, give to this room, and take what you need, and we will listen and support you… I think there’s a lot of room within the text to develop this play a bit more.” - Mezzanine user James Leo
• “can i just hug them all” - Mezzanine user Jonathan Guttenberg
• “The play made me think about how alcoholism is a disease, but that support and kindness is also contagious. And that in times of 'plague' it is impossible to get through dark times alone, like the serenity prayer. We need to rely on each other to get through it. This has been true throughout time and space.” - My +1 at the show

Read more audience reviews of The Dinosaurs on Show-Score.

Who should see The Dinosaurs

• Those interested in themes of alcoholism, sobriety, and spirituality could be inspired by the community in The Dinosaurs. The play could be a double feature with Blackout Songs, another current Off-Broadway play that deals with alcoholism.
• Fans of actress Elizabeth Marvel, among an excellent ensemble, would like to see her as one of the group's sterner but still caring members.
• One of the few loud noises at my performance was applause for Tony Award nominee Kathleen Chalfant, so fans would be happy to see her.
• Fans of challenging yet meditative plays would find The Dinosaurs among a league of others like Annie Baker’s Infinite Life.

Learn more about The Dinosaurs off Broadway

The brilliance of The Dinosaurs is in its blanks: the silences, the unrevealed, and the unresolved. What the fellowship gives and holds back makes up an existential tableau about healing and the human condition.

Learn more and get The Dinosaurs tickets on New York Theatre Guide. The Dinosaurs is at Playwrights Horizons through March 1.

Photo credit: The Dinosaurs off Broadway. (Photos by Julieta Cervantes)