I struggle to think of anything more terrifying than a doctor telling me that I have a terminal illness.
That’s in no small part due to the fact that I am, generally speaking, a highly anxious person. On the other hand, I’m optimistic about everything…just not health. A scratch in my throat is anaphylaxis. A tingling in my leg is Guillain-Barre syndrome. A blank spot in my memory means I’m one of the only 31 year olds in the world who will shortly develop Alzheimer’s disease. I’m most afraid of neuro-degenerative diseases. Ones where you lose your mind and your ability to walk.
Therefore, I’m the worst person who could have been invited to review a play about a young man who unexpectedly loses his ability to walk and shortly after loses his mind. The hours leading up to the performance were filled with cold sweat, trembling hands, and a palpitating heart. Do I cancel? Do I pull out? And yet, as uncomfortable and nervous as I was, a recurring thought came to me: I’ll learn something from this.
And I did.
Sitting in the Roundabout Theatre and severely anxious, I put on a brave face even though the man next to me (also a writer) wouldn’t stop talking at an abominably high pitch, “NO, IT’S JUST THAT LIKE…LIKE I JUST FEEL LIKE…HE COULD HAVE DONE MORE…YA KNOW?” I remained strong even as the words, “you…will…get…sick” flashed in giant letters before the audience like some sort of Dooms Day clock. SICK SICK SICK. The last word in particular flashed faster and faster still until I thought I’d be consumed by the onset of a panic attack. And then…
The play started. And I felt totally fine. I felt really good actually as I watched the performance. And here’s why if you’re the anxious type, particularly about your health, then you should see You Will Get Sick.
The play opens on Daniel K. Isaac whose presence is calming considering that he’s about to divulge the awful news that he’s received. I was grateful, exceedingly so, that the play takes place after he’s already gotten his mystery diagnosis and after he’s apparently had some time to get past the initial shock and emotion. Isaac is standing in a suffocatingly small apartment that might as well be a cell in Riker’s or an interrogation room at Gitmo. Here comes the pretty enticing premise: Isaac can’t bring himself to break the news to his family regarding his being sick and so he puts out a flier asking for someone, anyone, to do it for him.
Enter Linda Lavin giving him a ring on the phone who is a downright fucking delight from her very first line. Her body language, her tonality, her words – it’s a cocktail of the maternal mixed with a healthy spoonful of no bullshit. Lavin’s stage presence alone commands absolute attention.
It’s not long before the conversation turns into a bargain over how much Lavin should get paid for her work. This becomes a recurring humorous yet macabre banter throughout the play. Shortly after a negotiation regarding price is brokered, we meet a wild eyed man (Nate Miller) who tries to sell giant bird insurance to people on the street. “Who knows when a giant bird will swoop down and swallow you whole! Ensure your coverage by insuring with me!” It gave me a sense that there’s a jab being taken at America’s healthcare system. Oh, are you not seeing the correlation between giant birds and illness? Let me clue you in. Whenever death or the mention of it is on the horizon, people in the play don’t actually say that. Instead, they mention seeing a giant bird, or witnessing it carry their loved one away, or we hear it circling overhead.
We learn fairly soon into the play that Lavin is taking acting classes. She’s an aspiring Thespian who yearns with every gingham stitched fiber of her being to play Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. At one point, Isaac joins Lavin at her acting class and the type of humor that makes you clutch your sides ensues.
I think everyone in the audience was grateful for that and many moments like it.
There’s no shortage of genuinely punchy humor amidst the dark moments of the play. Those moments are actually some of the most inspiring ones in the production. They speak to one of the most remarkable things that humans do. At some point, after people quake with fear and shake their heads in disbelief and cry their eyes out after receiving bad news, they tend to do something remarkable in those dark moments. They make light of the situation. They laugh. They make others laugh.
I’m reminded of a man in Ireland, who, when he found out he would be dying soon, recorded himself saying, “hey! Let me out of here!” He had family members put the recording in his casket to be played as it was lowered into the ground so that his family could have a last laugh with him.
But it’s not all hee hees and hah hahs up there under the bright lights.
There’s still the matter of the giant bird flying around. And he’s gaining on Isaac’s trail. Probably because Isaac has hay coming out of him at an increasing rate. He spits it out of his mouth at random. It falls from his hair. It sits heavily on his shoulders. After a while he turns into a scarecrow. And then it clicks that this is an avant-garde, kind of parallel to Wizard of Oz.
Isaac does a good job of keeping it together…until a seizure literally rips his body apart and hay flies everywhere. Told you…avant garde. The seizures and loss of feeling in his limbs and inability to speak what’s on his heart all becomes too much for Isaac and he starts proclaiming that he wants to go home.
As a self proclaimed doctor who got her training at the university of Web MD, I’m going to assume that Isaac’s illness is neurological in nature. The numbness in his legs, seizures, and decreased cognition seem to point in that direction. In the film version of the Wizard of Oz, the scarecrow repeatedly laments, if I only had a brain. It’s a sentiment that Isaac can undoubtedly relate to, considering he has a brain but it’s just barely functioning. After seeing how much he’s struggling, home undoubtedly was code for just let me fucking die already. But also maybe not? Because it turns out Isaac is from Kansas and he’d rather be suffering there, not here in New York City where there’s roaches and a mob of mentally ill assailants on the streets and piss smelling subway cars and overcrowded hospitals.
There is good and bad in the human experience. There is good and bad in New York. I’m left wondering if the latter was meant to be a theme in the play or if I’m just really good at overthinking. The two grisly black walls at center stage functioned as Isaac’s suffocating apartment, his hospital room, a restaurant where life is shitty for absolutely everyone, and the subway or near subway (context – the subway is horrifying.)
And then, after pleading to “go home” Lavin brings Isaac to Kansas. It’s a beautiful stage set – blue skies in the background, overgrowing stalks of wheat, an undertone of serene quietude. The repetition from various members of the cast about “being able out breathe out here” is a foil to Isaac apparently never being able to breathe in New York City – even his ex used to say the air was poison. The comparison between “home” and New York City is blatant in terms of aesthetics. Does Diaz, like, hate the city or something? Don’t we all kind of hate living here a little? Don’t we all find ourselves wistfully thinking about our vacation to Florida last month or our summer getaway to upstate?
But maybe that’s not entirely true, because Diaz has touched on what are two proud paradoxes for many New Yorkers. We are kind, but we are not nice. The former being an action and the latter being a superficial facade. We are independent and don’t want to be bothered, but we are social as hell when the time calls for it. New Yorkers hate small talk. Hit us right with the chapter of your life that stars your narcissistic sister and the time you caught your straight boyfriend trying on your lipstick. These two strangers, Lavin and Isaac going on this morbid adventure together is precisely the time of antic that can only happen and make sense in New York City.
Quite honestly, if the giant bird of death or coughing up of actual hay leave you confused that’s OK. The lesson delivered at the end of the play is what’s most important. It’s a simple bit of advice delivered by Isaac’s brother, but it’s important in a stoic way. You ready? Here it is: “I got sick. Things happen.”
Of all the beautiful, poignant, brilliant words written and performed on stage — it’s this phrase that’s become something like a mantra to me.
I’ve had my share of bad fortune in the last few years. What’s more insufferable than the string of events themselves, is my incessant need to know why. Why me? Why my family? What did I do wrong?
Therapy works for one reason. Nobody is offering a client information that they didn’t already know or couldn’t have figured out while thinking in the shower. There is one benefit of therapy and it’s that the therapist is a third person telling you a truth that you wouldn’t have accepted from anyone else.
Things happen was a jolt of therapy for me. There’s not always some misstep which leads to misfortune, or some bad karma bank that begins to overflow. The world mostly turns independent of what we do or do not do. Things just happen. Full stop.
If you’re someone who feels anxious and maybe even angered by how little control we sometimes have in life, go see this play. You’ll feel weirded out and probably even a little confused, but you’ll definitely leave feeling better as well.
