Reality television is a vicious mistress: viewers cluck their tongues at premises that seem engineered solely to expose contestants to potential harms, be they physical or psychological. Yet for better or worse, episodes that promise contestant breakdowns or near-death medical emergencies are among the most publicized and talked about in the genre. (Un?)fortunately, to date, no show has ever seen a contestant perish on camera — a threshold that playwright Eric Coble shatters in his nail-biter of a satire, The Dead Guy. In Williamston Theatre’s production, part of a continuing partnership with Michigan State University Department of Theatre, director Tony Caselli dives headlong into the ethical wasteland of television entertainment, an industry that requires each new offering to be more shocking than the last to keep its ratings up.
In the world of the play, The Dead Guy is a new reality series by bottom-feeder producer Gina Yaweth (Robin Lewis-Bedz). No longer daring humans to touch savage wild animals and filming the results, Gina concocts the ultimate ratings grab of a premise: give a man a million dollars, film him spending it for a week, and then watch him die by a method of the audience’s choosing. Her subject is Eldon Phelps (Chris Korte), a small-town presence who has never been reliably employed and was just given up on for good by his girlfriend; Eldon enters into his contract with eyes open, hoping to make a difference in the world rather than pass through unnoticed. The seemingly impossible sell is made believable by a combination of Lewis-Bedz’s frightening skill for understated spin and Korte’s characterization as a guy of pendulum-swing choices, the kind who finds himself unhappy and believes that what will turn his fortunes around is a complete one-eighty to the opposite extreme. After the contract is signed in the production’s first few minutes, there is nothing else to do but see how it all plays out.
How the story unfolds, to the viewer at least, is in a completely immersive multimedia world that pushes the boundaries between stage play and television play. The show relies heavily on media design by B. Emil Boulos, a handful of so-bad-it’s-good lead-ins and commercials blended with live video feed originating onstage by Gina’s cameraman, Dougie (Eric Eilersen). The video is seamlessly integrated into the other production elements, reflected in the several televisions of Zac Campbell’s scaffold-overrun set and lush sound design by Peter Martino. Ambient lighting by Genesis Garza completes the self-consciously self-referential TV studio feel (landing somewhere between Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and the MTV Video Music Awards), which lulls the viewer into the artificiality of the concept, until the deadline draws nearer and the reality becomes all too real.
Ultimately, here’s the incredible thing about the production: even with the outcome always in sight, Caselli and cast leave the viewer continually in anguish over what will happen. At first, it’s an intellectual exercise that parallels the themes of the fictitious show; Eldon’s intentions captivatingly zigzag from misplaced Robin Hood gestures to orgiastic excesses to hangdog resignation to naked contrition, and it’s smartly plotted by Coble. Yet what Caselli slowly unravels, with help from the supporting cast, is the division between TV’s Dead Guy and Eldon the person. Lewis-Bedz and Eilerson do fine work grappling with the disconnect between relating to their subject as a protagonist and as a human being, a development that helps gives the play a conscience. Assisted by emblematic costumes by Renée Suprenant, the other three performers play a handful of roles each: Ian Page has a single-mindedly guileless turn as Eldon’s brother, Michelle Serje brings depth to smaller, mundane interactions, exemplified in her totally unimpressed medical professional, and Chris Purchis works chilling wonders with the staggering morality of Eldon’s disappointed mother.
The Dead Guy is commendable for setting up an abominable premise and then forcing the audience to live within it — and its implied complicity — until they, like Eldon, hope against hope that a twist or reprieve might change the outcome. Operating deep within the belly of the beast, the tech-pervasive production both condemns the ethically irresponsible consequences of reality television and capitalizes on our draw to it, resulting in a show that might be hard to watch if it weren’t impossible to look away.