7 Stories High

Description
*** [THREE STARS] Paid for with hefty loans from the banks of "Rashoman" and "The Sixth Sense," "7 Stories High" revolves around four characters living in the same building, which has suffered a fire. Who set it, why and what happened as a result are the questions before the audience. It's not a very interesting story. But story isn’t what the playwright, Hilary Leichter, is really after here: Her concerns are meaning, language and the Forsterian difficulties of human connection. The latter is the weakest theme on offer, since most of eccentric characters--a boisterous and imaginative nine-year-old girl, an awkward artist, a mother and her kleptomaniacal 16-year-old daughter--never really engage emotionally. (The exception is the mother, Cora, played with charming vivaciousness by Havilah Brewster.) But although this writerly play isn’t fabulously exciting to watch, at times it’s definitely interesting to listen to, thanks to the playwright’s tenacious attention to language. The play is essentially a series of pas de deux using the same choreography of symbols and phrases but in different conversations. In the end, it’s enjoyably clever linguistic spoon bending; you only wish it were in the service of a tale worth telling.—-Brian Farnham, Editor-in-Chief