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A CurtainUp Review
Winners and Losers
By Jacob Horn
As arbitrary as it is seemingly inconsequential (some topics include Pamela Anderson, Mexico, and microwave ovens), the game emphasizes competition for the sake of competition. But as the subjects get more personal and the stakes get higher, can the two make it out with their friendship, or sense of self-worth, in one piece? Directed by Chris Abraham Winners and Losers offers an interesting concept—the public staging of a real-life friendship and its discontents—and eagerly engages difficult topics like social class head-on. Yet the show finds itself mired in the tension between the play as reality and as construct. Even if all the lines reflect true conversations between the two men, this true-to-life element is never reconciled with the fact that the show has been performed numerous times already (it originated in Canada and toured internationally before arriving at Soho Rep), and will be performed numerous times to come. As a result, we end up in a sort of limbo, neither real nor fictitious. At some points, Youssef and Long call attention to the fact that they've performed the show before; other times, they react as if they are hearing and responding to something for the first time. The problem is that we're particularly aware that they're not. Certainly, all theater is artifice, at least to a degree, but the crucial difference here is a frustrating dissonance created by embracing that artificiality one moment and denying it the next. Once you start looking at the show with this in mind, it's hard to stop. When a spontaneous wrestling match breaks out, it feels calculated and emotionally removed (I was reminded of the characteristically disaffected characters in a Richard Maxwell play). Maybe that's the point: the ritualization, by rote, of masculine rivalry made physically manifest? But it's hard to shake the feeling that, after repeatedly performing this intensely personal show, the performers might simply need to detach themselves from it, as a defense mechanism if nothing else. Indeed, the content does get quite heavy, and Youssef and Long deserve commendation for subjecting themselves to such thorough examination (perhaps "attack" might be the more appropriate word in places). They confront their beliefs, their privileges and disadvantages, and their hopes and fears. The moments that are most riveting for the audience are those which you know must be the most brutal for the actors, and the audience is thus implicated as an eager witness to the emotional blood sport being enacted before them. So then maybe it's a Catch-22: the more charged a performance is, the more it might encourage detachment as the show's run continues. Such an evolution would be, in the creators' minds, an important part of the project, which is as much about how the show affects each of them individually and the relationship between the two of them over time as it is about any individual performance. (A text by Youssef and Long offering an interesting discussion of this long-term outlook was included with press materials but strangely omitted from the program.) Ultimately, Winners and Losers rewards viewers for going along for the ride, but the road there is bumpy. The early rounds of the game are far less compelling than the later ones, and the show can never quite shake a sense of manufacturedness that constantly battles against the autobiographical core of the play. Even while the show offers a healthy dose of real talk, it's still a play, artificiality and all.
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