A siege is terrifying. It’s deeply disorienting. It’s also, as Gab Reisman argues in her lively, quasi-Marxist comedy “Spindle Shuttle Needle,” a bit of a bummer.
“I should paint outside and go to the book club!” moans Charlotte, a young woman of good family. “I should go to Dresden to study Swedish.”
Instead, Charlotte (Monique St. Cyr), who may have done something stupid with some sensitive diplomatic letters, spends her days in the rough-hewn cottage of Tilda (Mia Katigbak), a weaver. Hanni (Zoë Geltman), Tilda’s daughter, and Jules (Florencia Lozano), an Italian refugee with a criminal past, also stay there. The time is late in the Napoleonic Wars and the place is somewhere in or near Saxony. As the women spin wool into yarn and weave yarn into blankets, the sound of battle rumbles just outside the wooden doors.
Winner of Clubbed Thumb’s biennial commission, Spindle Shuttle Needle joins a perky postmodern troupe of plays that break history through the unwary lens of the present. (As I watched it, on the narrow stage of the Wild Project, I thought of recent and semi-recent Off Broadway plays such as David Adjmi’s “Marie Antoinette”, Jordan Harrison’s “The Amateurs” and Jen’s “The Moors” Silverman.) The assignment prompted writers to reflect on the work of playwright Caryl Churchill, and Reisman’s comedy has echoes of Churchill’s early plays, such as “Light Shining in Buckinghamshire” and “Vinegar Tom.”
But that comparison is not so instructive. Reisman has a few big themes in mind: the transition from a craft economy to a capitalist economy, the role of women in war. But the Marxist analyzes are quite limited. And the looting of war (embodied in the arrival of a young soldier, played by Seth Clayton) is never staged with enough realism to be fully recorded. There is a playful refusal to consider what life would have been like two centuries ago in a besieged Germany and an incomplete attempt to suggest what all this might mean for us now. All this doesn’t mean that “Spindle Shuttle Needle” isn’t a very fun time.
Directed by Tamilla Woodard, the play works best as a hangout comedy about the boundary-pushing witches that women do when left in narrow spaces and cramped conditions, when usually left alone. Occasionally, Reisman flirts with a conspiracy. Will Hanni find her brother? Will Charlotte’s secret be discovered? Will Tilda, a loom genius, be accepted into the all-male weavers’ guild? And hey, what’s that brand on Jules’ neck? But Reisman’s greater interest is in how these very different women fill their time and their cooking pot, how they jostle with each other.
And so we get scenes where they dose each other herbal tinctures; they pick nits from each other’s hair; they kill a chicken for dinner; they clean the fur of a rabbit; they tell stories, like a crow, a mouse and a sausage. (That fable is a little Aesop, a little Brothers Grimm, much Reisman.)
They also spin, which is played here as a downright erotic activity. Even Tilda’s instructions for handling the wire seem ambiguous.
“Wet your fingers and then slide it along the twist,” she says. “Push and let go. Press and release. Find the rhythm for yourself and then keep it steady. slide. You feel it?” Let’s say yes, Charlotte feels it.
Katigbak is an Off Off Broadway darling, and will remain so here, as is Tina Benko, who plays a villainous entrepreneur. St. Cyr, Geltman and Clayton are less known, and Lozano is better known from television. Each is given space and language to shine in the tidy walls of Frank J. Oliva’s masonry set, lit by Barbara Samuels, in playful, slightly silly costumes by Dina El-Aziz. The overall pattern of “Spindle Shuttle Needle” isn’t particularly impressive, but the individual threads still sparkle.
Spindle shuttle needle
Until June 16 at Clubbed Thumb, Manhattan; clubbedthumb.org. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes.