Great Cast Maximizes What “In My Bones” Has to Offer

Simi, an “illegal” African immigrant, has been detained at the U.K.’s Brideswell Immigration Detention Center for 11 months when she gets an unlikely new cellmate: a White, middle-aged botanist/author who’s lived in Britain for 30 years. Add a few expected tropes — fish-out-of-water, culture clash, ersatz mother-daughter bonding — and you’re about halfway to In My Bones.

But playwright Doc Andersen-Bloomfield musters more than that. There’s enough meat on her characters’ bones to allow this super fine cast to rise above the script’s weakest bits. Add in spot-on structure and pacing, plus a visual element that provides more than you get at first glance, and the net result is a satisfying theatrical experience.

Start with that cast. As Simi, Maiya Carter is a force no less in her subtlest reactions than in her but-this-amp-goes-to-11 moments (the play blasts off with Simi screaming at a prison guard — too loud for the tiny Garage Theatre confines, really, but so organic that you can’t question the choice). She even manages the rare trick of letting us witness Simi’s humor and amusement as organically seeping from the inside rather than always being played to the audience. But Carter and director Sonja Berggren know how to pick their spots, too, and so the few jokes that are played to the audience work every time.

As new-arrival Antonia, Karen Wray is good, particularly in the play’s opening scenes, when she’s at her most conversational, scared stiff and stammering like you bloody well would if after more than 50 years of a crimeless life you suddenly found yourself in gaol. Unfortunately, the worst thing about In My Bones is Antonia’s monologs, particularly when she’s speaking in apostrophe (leaving a voicemail, writing a letter) to the man whose scheming led to her incarceration. Long, self-indulgent, unfunny, and needlessly expository, you can’t help but feel for Wray, because it’s certainly not her fault that you’re squirming in your seat.

The supporting players are likewise excellent. As Aggasou — part narrator, part imaginary friend/panther — Ron Holsey is not only integral to bringing to life Simi’s ad hoc mythology but makes the most of every tableau and purr — to say nothing of his big moment. And despite having the play’s least glamorous role, Tamika Katon-Donegal’s mean-spirited jailer is completely believable in every word and gesture. 

(The cast gets extra credit for holding it together (with a slight wobble) when an unconscionably rude trio in the front row began stuffing their faces with cookies and candy in plastic packaging that made a helluva crinkly racket each of the many times they stuck their stupid hands in. It’s not your living room, assholes — and those are real, live people walking a tightrope for you onstage, and they hear every stupid sound you make. It’s a 90-minute play with an intermission — you can fucking go an hour without snacks.)

Although in the program notes Andersen-Bloomfield explains that In My Bones is based on her research into the plight of women refugees held illegally in overflowing U.K. detention centers, there’s a gap in the play’s foundation. Although Antonia provides a broken, convoluted explanation on how she landed in Brideswell, it makes so little sense that we can’t help feeling she’s there only because Andersen-Bloomfield wanted a well-connected White woman in lockup with Simi in order to hit certain predetermined targets. 

However, because In My Bones is about pathos more than politics or procedure, we can more or less overlook this failing. Ditto the Act Two callbacks, which are by turns too obvious and numerous but no more heavy-handed than what we find in lots of average writing for stage and screen. And it should be said that all in all In My Bones is above average. Simi in particular is a well-written character, and her above-referenced mythology comes off exactly as Andersen-Bloomfield hopes. She also moves us efficiently from A to B, taking us down the right short sideroads and tending well enough to the emotional landscape along the way. Really, if it weren’t for Antonia’s monologs and the muddle about how she got there…. 

The mise en scène produces similarly mixed results. The clear shortcoming is the sound design. Most of the piped-in cues (music playing in Simi & Antonia’s cell, offstage drumming and yelling) should (and could easily) be diegetic. There’s also a stretch of “score” music that’s way too melodramatic for its own good — although the main problem here is probably that Berggren simply couldn’t think of an effective way to stage this wordless scene within the Garage’s limitations. (Fortunately, Holsey and especially Carter keep us interested enough to get what we need.) 

Otherwise, good show, team. With precious little space to play with, Eliot Ohlemeyer has created a tri-level recessed backdrop that simultaneously serves as a baobab tree and a cell wall. Self-evidently functional, a couple of its understated aesthetic flourishes fully reveal themselves only under Benedict Conran’s thoughtful lighting. Alas, there’s one scene that desperately cries out for a moving spotlight — I’m sure no-one’s more aware of this than Conran — but the Garage lighting rig simply precludes the possibility.

Before curtain-up it was announced that In My Bones is the final play in Panndora Productions’ 20-year history. If that’s true (a note in the program leaves the door open for re-opening the Panndora box at some future date), bringing to life a decent new play with a fantastic young cast is a nice swansong. 

In My Bones at Panndora Productions
Times: Fri–Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm & May 25 (Thur) 8pm
The show runs through May 28.
Cost: $15–$30
Details: panndoraproductions.com
Venue: The Garage Theatre, 251 E. 7th St., Long Beach