The title of Hanna Kime’s sensitively drawn new play “The Targeted” refers to a real collection of many thousands of people — “Targeted Individuals,” or “TIs” — who believe they are being harassed, controlled and surveilled via implanted devices (“voice-to-skull technology”), zapped with microwaves or otherwise “gangstalked” by an evil conspiracy of as-yet-unidentified thems. “They” are almost certainly governmental in nature, because, the reasoning goes, why else would the government allow this to happen?
Eventually, TIs believe, they’ll be able to expose and bring down their persecutors, finally showing everyone around them — including the family members and doctors who don’t believe them, possibly for surreptitious reasons — that they’ve been right all along.
Produced by A Red Orchid Theatre and staged at the Chopin Theatre with an extraordinary cast under the direction of Grace Dolezal-Ng, “The Targeted” brings together a collection of TIs at a camp-set retreat in 2017, the “Solidarity and Truth Summit,” organized by TI and YouTuber Jeff (a sincerely earnest Lawrence Grimm).
There are the regulars who’ve been part of the small, tight community for years: the intense and dominating Rhonda (Kirsten Fitzgerald) and her personality opposite, the sweet and sensitive Didi (Natalie West). Two younger TIs are still processing what’s happening to them: wife and mother Sherry (Sadieh Rifai), who has been experiencing an undiagnosable pain ever since a flu shot; and Eric (Glenn Obrero), a young man whose convictions about his being targeted have alienated him from his parents. At Eric’s invitation and urging, his “normie” sister Mia (Stephanie Shum) has come with him, insisting she is trying to “understand,” but mostly desperate to keep Eric from isolating even further.
As subjects for fictional entertainment, conspiracists are usually the stuff of satire or mystery-thrillers, genres that A Red Orchid has certainly been known for. And those types of work are without question swirling in the popular culture zeitgeist. The Steppenwolf production of Tracy Letts’ psychologically intense “Bug” recently had a successful Broadway run. Two of the most prominent, artful film directors — Ari Aster (“Eddington”) and Yorgos Lanthimos (“Bugonia”) — have fused the thriller and satire genres by being willing to follow conspiracy tales to their wildest, supernatural extremes.
What’s different about “The Targeted” — and I found this refreshing — is that it’s neither satire nor thriller. There is plenty of genuine humor here, but it’s gentle and even kind rather than hard-edged, even when characters cover themselves in tin foil. The narrative doesn’t pursue the potential truths of government mind control experiments, which have certainly existed and perhaps still do, nor does it attempt to diagnose the mental health issues some so clearly wear on the surface.
Instead, the play explores human needs — for understanding, belonging, love — as it follows the dynamics among the TIs and between the TIs and Mia, a clear stand-in for Kime’s point of view: skeptical — non-believing would be fair — yet respectful.
How characters respond to Mia tells us a lot about them. Jeff thrives on trying to convince her — he needs people to believe him — with his slew of PowerPoint slides, based often on the established history of government misdeeds in which so many of these beliefs are rooted.
Rhonda, on the other hand, resents any presence of the non-targeted. She says it’s because the retreat should allow a respite from the perpetual questioning, but we begin to suspect it’s because they aren’t susceptible to her aggressive manipulations. Fitzgerald, an always-powerful performer playing a character prone to intimidation, forces everyone around her to resist or succumb, which all cast members — especially West and Rifai — do with honesty and nuance.
Her scene with Obrero’s innocent Eric is easily the most memorable of the show, squirmy in the best possible sense, with Fitzgerald exposing a new layer of Rhonda’s personality with ill-timed giggles. Dolezal-Ng’s direction here beautifully deepens Kime’s already layered characterizations.
Kime ultimately expresses a complex sympathy. These “targeted” characters face very real suffering but can be just as capable, and maybe more so, of causing it. They can never disbelieve their own internal experience or the patterns and people they’ve found that explain their reality. They need and seek validation from a community, and that community feeds their obsessions.
Don’t bother arguing with your local conspiracy theorist, the play suggests. If you can, just love them. Not because their views deserve it, but because, quite simply, they need it.