REVIEW: 1999 is a Powerful Investigation Into the #MeToo Movement
Through 11/2 @ Shakespeare & Company, Lenox MA
Photos by Outdoor Chronicles Photography
“What brought the strongest reaction from me, surely because of what the country is going through, is Naomi’s fire to call predators to account.”
1999 by Stacey Isom Campbelli, a World Premiere playing at The Bernstein Theatre on the Shakespeare & Company campus in Lenox, MA is an investigation into the #Metoo movement and what it asks of those affected by it…namely, all of us.
The play jumps between two time frames, 1999 and 2019. In 2019, where we open, Emma (Zoë Lais) is a college professor teaching a class on films of the ‘90s. Her rebellious student Naomi (Zurie Adams) takes great exception to these films, especially those by “that man.”
Curiously, I don’t remember Harvey Weinstein ever mentioned by name. American Beauty is featured prominently but that movie is connected to sexual assault by the actor Kevin Spacey who was accused and later acquitted of multiple accusations of sexual misconduct by young men in the U.S. and U.K. He was fired from House of Cards, cut from his agency and removed from All the Money in the World and has yet to regain his career. American Beauty also notably has the father fixated on his daughter’s young friend as an epitome of beauty.
In the play’s other time period, 1999, Emma has a growing friendship and collaboration with an actor Reese (Caroline Festa) which leads them to Sundance with a short film of Emma’s. At the Festival, wild Reese meets up with a notorious producer at a bar and goes back to his room where she is assaulted.
Emma and Reese’s partnership collapses back in Los Angeles and Reese takes off for Nova Scotia while Emma eventually wins an Oscar for Best Documentary Short and starts teaching classes. Zoë Lais is a very accessible guide for the journey and I found Caroline Festa magnetically watchable.
The play and WAM Artistic Director Genée Coreno, who helmed this production, do a great job of raising the stakes, ratcheting up the tension and holding your attention through the quick 90 minute runtime. There are plenty of reversals, consequences and incidents to keep track of and all three women get properly amped up.
The set was a room of 30 televisions of different sizes which would play murky scenes of the women. Set design by Baron E. Pugh, sound and video by Colette “Ettie” Pin, lighting by Jemma Kepner, and great costumes with distinctive looks for the three by Malory Stewardson Grillo.
Each character brings forth many questions in this world premiere and I felt myself strongly identifying with each one of them, sometimes siding with both in the middle of the scene. What brought the strongest reaction from me, surely because of what the country is going through, is Naomi’s fire to call predators to account. Zurie Adams is an exceptionally natural, powerful actor and comes into her own in these scenes.
1999 refers to an exceptionally great year for movie making according to Professor Emma. American Beauty, Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, Fight Club, Girl, Interrupted, The Sixth Sense. I’m not feeling bowled over by this argument; it seems rather arbitrary. The title 1999 more strongly puts in mind, to me, millennial change… unfortunately the #MeToo movement started in 2006.
The questions raised by what attention we need to pay to art created by the unconscionable were appreciated and necessary. Should we check the provenance of the artist when responding to a movie? Unfortunately, I felt that the play pulled its punches. I was left with too many questions about event details that happened in the play and I feel by not naming Weinstein directly, the play loses its urgency. It is asking the audience to stand up and hold offenders to account which we are all primed to hear at this time but does not specify the accused nor is it specific about the fictional assault in the play.
1999 presented by WAM Theatre at The Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre on the Shakespeare & Company campus plays through 11/2. Tickets: www.wamtheatre.org
