Driven to distraction

Distracted, the newest production from Artists Repertory Theatre, is a disappointing look at the modern world’s attention span.

I realize the irony that a two hour play is the medium in which to discuss the subject, however there is more than just cognitive dissonance going on in Distracted, where a family is involved in trying to help their son with his attention problems while simultaneously trying to connect, but finding it difficult with the increasing noise from their laptops, cell phones and therapists distracting their mission. 

For a lot of people the subject will hit close to home. Many people deal with the commonality of using prescription drugs to alleviate stress, depression, anxiety, hyperactivity, you name it. When the patient up for grabs is a child, in this case an annoying 9-year-old boy named Jesse (played enthusiastically by Steve Rathje) it requires deep contemplation by the parents, who incidentally have no names, and are just referred to as Mama and Dad, played by Kimberley Howard and Leif Norby, respectively.

The frustration is amplified when nosy neighbors, played quite well by Betty Moyer and Sarah Lucht, come around to prod at Mama and to exert feelings of superiority over Mama’s quizzical choice of putting Jesse on Ritalin.

The story is set up to be engaging and actually relevant to an audience that probably deals with many of the problems portrayed in the play—but I have to ask, why would you want to go see a play about some fucked up family, when all you have to do is look around your living room?—but it misses the mark with its inconsistencies and heavy handedness.

Why have most modern plays decided to break the fourth wall in unnecessary ways?

Distracted is another addition to this list (and the writer and director can’t chalk it up to “Well that’s what having ADD is like,” because that’s just lazy) using an actor playing multiple characters to freak out and explain to the audience about how Adderall, a psychostimulant, is the only thing that keeps him coming to the theater to perform every day.

The problem with this is that it is inconsistent. He does it only a few times, and it doesn’t move the story forward, it isn’t insightful, it isn’t really even that funny, just confusing and completely unnecessary.

On top of breaking the fourth wall, the character of Mama lives in the land of asides, where she is constantly speaking directly to the audience, partly to explain the situation, but really it takes away from her dealing with her fictional world that is going up in flames.

Another unfortunate problem was that the solution to the family’s predicament was painfully obvious with one of the first stage directions, wherein Jesse, the main character who everyone spends their time talking about, is stationed offstage, only to screech intermittently about scene changes.

The moral to the story is that the family doesn’t need drugs and naturopathy or any of that crap to help Jesse with his ADD; they just need to pay attention to their kid. Well, yeah, that point is hammered home by the play’s decision to NOT have him in the audience’s face yet have the main characters discussing him ad nauseam. It’s a cheap trick.

Distracted isn’t a total bust, however. The acting for the most part is solid, with superior performances by Howard and Lucht. The message is worth talking about, but perhaps theater isn’t the right place to relay it, because, and I will generalize here, I was one of the few audience members under the age of 40 so I believe the themes of being dependent on technology and the Eminem raps were lost on the older crowd.

Perhaps that is a problem with theater in general, younger generations have less interest in it, and more interest in their iPhones. It’s a message I didn’t need Distracted to tell me, yet it was one that certainly got across.