If you’re reading these posts in order (which is unlikely,) you may realize that this play is from the same library trip as the two Cariani plays, meaning this is the juiciest of theatrical fruits: a play I don’t know from an author I don’t know.

Need to Know follows a young couple moving back to New York from LA and their snap judgment of a neighbor. They learn in short order that the walls of the apartment are thin enough that their neighbor probably heard them, and so they seek to make amends which does not go well.

As the Audience
I’m of two minds on this play- which I should say I’d love to see someone do (in Houston it feels like a cross between a Fourth Wall and Dirt Dogs show: a little too empty for one, and a little too tame for the other): on one hand it feels like a short idea which has been stretched for time: you’re not holding my interest because I want to hear what comes next, but rather because you’re stretching out what I know you’re going to, which takes a lot of skill to pull off.

The tension is the game, and Caren doesn’t let that tension go easily, but man if you find the wrong audience this is going to not be a good night of theater.

At the same time, dribbles of information keeps popping up in unexpected places, so even though everything happens as I largely expect it to: we say something mean, feel bad about it, get dragged for it, apologize, move on with our lives, my understanding of why they’re doing these things keeps progressing, not necessarily at the pace I want it to, but in an interesting fashion none-the-less.

Caren wants this show, in some ways, to be about class consciousness, and while I don’t buy it, it’s not a great meditation that theme, there’s enough there, especially at the end, to give all of us something to think about in regards to some people’s floor is other people’s ceiling.

As a Designer
Eh, there isn’t much: this is a realistic, contemporary play where the lights will brighten people’s faces, the costumes will look like people in their 30’s, and the sound (if it exists) will be street noise and music between scenes. Our one point of interest is for scenery where the challenge of showing some, but not all, of both apartments could yield some intriguing choices.

As a Writer
Need to Know is a shiny new nickel in the bucket of “plays with difficult, if not excruciating, characters,” which continues to be a good reminder to make these people as difficult as possible and trust the charisma of the actors to help pull it all off.

That’s not entirely fair, as Caren’s characters have a lot of humanity to go along with their big ol’ scoop of character’s flaw (it rhymes with cole slaw, keep up), and in fact this play has one of the loveliest moments of being a couple I’ve seen committed to paper; don’t tell the kids, but early on when the husband comes home their is an extended moment of non-plot relevant, shameless (and shameful) flirting: the kind of thing that only two people who are used to playing with each other would do, it’s lovely and endearing, and necessary since they go on to be pretty rude, all things considered.

All though each individual moment feels good: the pacing is solid, the characters are interesting, the dialog engages the reader, at the end of the day the simplicity of the plot means that I’m not holding onto the work like I want to. We could compare this to something like Really Really which also has a simple plot, but enough character perspectives (especially from both sides of the main issue) that it gives us a handle, which is a little lacking in Caren’s work here.