EVERYBODY: Rider Theatre has presented “Everybody” online. Written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by C. Ryanne Domingues, the show is a contemporary retelling of the 15th-century morality play “Everyman.” Everybody (Samantha Cassidy, right) desperately asks for a crucial favor from Love (Rebecca Ponticello, left). (Image from videography by Darren Sussman, courtesy of Rider University)

By Donald H. Sanborn III

Rider Theatre has presented Everybody online April 21-25. Princeton University alumnus and MacArthur Fellow Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ script is a contemporary adaptation of Everyman, a medieval morality play. Everybody premiered at the Signature Theatre in 2017, and was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Rider’s polished presentation is directed by Passage Theatre Artistic Director C. Ryanne Domingues. She guides the talented cast through the multiple roles that the script requires them to juggle, and gives the production the appearance of having taken place live in an auditorium—the show was filmed in the university’s Yvonne Theater—while making the most of the advantages offered by video editing.

(Due to COVID precautions, actors never were filmed together. However, Darren Sussman’s nimble editing helps the video to avoid the choppy, one-actor-per-screen appearance of many online productions.)

An Usher (portrayed by Sarah Santos McCluskey, who gives the character an affable, matter-of-fact demeanor) introduces the play. “It was based on another play from the 15^th-century, called Everyman, which was one of the earliest recorded plays in the English language.”

After noting Everyman’s likely origins in Elckerlijc—a Dutch play attributed to Peter van Diest—and a Buddhist fable, the Usher quips: “We’re dealing with some fairly old and ancient material, so let’s just trust it to be really wise and meaningful, okay? And be forgiving of some of its storytelling quirks.”

The Usher cues God, whose love for the world does not negate anger at the human race’s pride and arrogance. (McCluskey portrays the “God Body,” while Ellie Pearlman plays “God in Voice.”) 

God summons Death (Trevor Shingler) and instructs him to “seek out Everybody, and bring them to me…I need them to give me some sense of how and why they have lived the way they have lived, so I can make the appropriate adjustments to my beloved experiment.” Death tries to project fearsomeness, but this is to cover milquetoast uncertainty: “Where even is Everybody?” he stammers.

This cues the appearance of Somebody One (played by Jerome Manning), Two (Juliette Nero Eddings), Three (Kate DeLong), Four (Erik Olsson) and Five (Samantha Cassidy). Death explains to the skeptical group that God wants a “report…of your time here and how you spent it—why you lived your life so wrong.”

Later he adds, “Once you’re there you can never come back—I think.”

The group hastily invents reasons why they can’t go. Somebody Two unsuccessfully attempts to bribe Death. Somebody Five asks if she can bring someone. Death agrees—if anyone is brave enough to make the journey.

Breezily the Usher returns with a bingo cage, and announces that from this point in the play onward, the actors’ roles will be decided by lottery at every performance. This is to underline “the randomness of death, while also destabilizing your preconceived notions about identity.” This conceit, which requires the ensemble to memorize the entire script, is a Jacobs-Jenkins addition to the story. In this production Somebody Five is cast as Everybody, and must accompany Death.

“We figured out that filming the show multiple times (with a different actor in a different role for each filming) was going to be virtually impossible, so we had to drop the idea and only do one version of the show,” Domingues acknowledges in an email to this writer. “We did do the exercise during rehearsal, where each actor picked a role ‘out of a hat’ and read for that role during the rehearsal that day.”

One of the “storytelling quirks” alluded to by the Usher is that “some people are not going to play people.” Many characters are abstract ideas in the guise of people. Everybody first approaches the debonair Friendship (Manning). Despite having expressed a willingness to “go to Hell and back” for Everybody, Friendship declines the journey, quipping that the promise was “to Hell and back.”

Everybody also fails to persuade the insincerely sympathetic Kinship (Nero Eddings) and Cousinship (DeLong) to join the pilgrimage. Kinship suggests asking a scared Girl (Anna Spendley) sitting in the audience, who apprehensively shakes her head “no.”

Next, Everybody approaches Stuff (infused with placid reserve by Olsson). Stuff (Jacobs-Jenkins’ version of “Goods”) points out that acquiring him has distracted Everybody from preparing for her presentation. He bristles when Everybody refers to him as hers; when she dies, he will become a distraction to somebody else.

What makes these vignettes entertaining is that these characters are given such recognizable personalities. The line deliveries of Manning, Nero Eddings, DeLong and Olsson spotlight the performative nature of many human interactions. The indignant surprise with which Cassidy imbues her performance is what makes us believe Everybody’s horrified discovery of that shallowness.

Scenic Designer Buck Linton decorates the stage elaborately for those sequences, underlining the time and thought we put into our physical (rather than spiritual) space. Everybody and Friendship sit in the center of what looks like a fairly elegant restaurant. (Headless department store mannequins—which perhaps are there to suggest other customers—make the tableau rather eerie.) Everybody’s encounter with Cousinship and Kinship is set in a modest but comfortable-looking living room.

The elegance of those settings contrasts with that of Everybody’s meeting with Stuff. Expectedly, Stuff is surrounded by Everybody’s possessions (which include a rack of clothes, a suitcase, and an electric piano), but many of the things are in a pile, held together with a rope. The clothes collection is telling when juxtaposed against the ripped pants that Costume Designer Robin Shane has given her to wear. (Shane gives Stuff a jacket that is green—the color of cash.)

It is equally telling that, unlike the previous encounters, Everybody’s meeting with Love (Rebecca Ponticello) does not take place on the stage, but in the auditorium. The loyal but tough-talking character is furious at being neglected, and temporarily exits into the hallway, threatening to leave unless Everybody repeatedly voices acknowledgment of the fragility and impermanence of her natural life.

This is followed by a sequence that is a highlight of the show: “La Danse Macabre,” a ballet that is a triumphant collaboration between Todd Lloyd’s lighting, John Viggiano’s music (largely scored for piano), and dance by Pearlman and Spendley (who wear skulls on their hats). The choreography and projections give the illusion that a row of dancers is forming a pathway that will lead Everybody to the end of her journey. The overt, resolute theatricality of the sequence is an extension of the dialogue in which the Usher acknowledges that she is in a play.

This pathway motif also is present in a series of dreamlike interludes in which an unseen chorus of voices comments on the action. As they talk, Everybody follows an illuminated path toward a bright spotlight. This interpolation of commentary and an extended musical (dance) sequence, as well as the avoidance of a fourth wall, suggest that elements of Greek tragedy and Brechtian alienation effects are being blended with the medieval drama.

Domingues and her collaborators use these elements to create a series of compelling and often dazzling tableaux. At the play’s climax Everybody descends a trapdoor that obviously represents a grave. But virtual theater is starting to rise above its origins as a somewhat crude stopgap, to become an art form in its own right—and prepare us to return to its in-person counterpart represented by the empty auditorium.

To learn about other Rider University presentations, visit rider.edu/about/events.