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The first time I saw David Greenspan perform was in Adrian Einspanier’s Lunch Bunch this past spring at the 122 Community Center in the East Village. I didn’t know of him or his lore, but in the one scene in which he appeared, it was apparent he was a veteran theatrical performer with a deep somatic practice. David sparkled as he played the role of a Bronx defender ousted from the fourth floor and sent upstairs to the fifth. Though I can’t tell you exactly what this demotion symbolized– except an ascension by a flight of stairs– not seeing Greenspan would have been a loss. 

And so, when I heard about On Set With Theda Bara– an entire evening of David playing various characters all intertwined with the late silent movie star Theda Bara– I was intrigued. The show originally premiered in February 2023 as part of the Exponential Theater Festival at The Brick Theater in Williamsburg; but, after a seven-day run was met with such enthusiasm talks of an extension began. The latest presentation of On Set is a co-production by the Transport Group (with which Greenspan has a long professional history) and the Lucille Lortel Theater. However, an agreement was made to keep the production at The Brick. It was important to Merlo that the show stay in Brooklyn to help challenge an association of theater with expensive tickets, huge spaces, and glittering marquees. Merlo believes committing to the Brooklyn location is one of the many reasons the audiences have been so diverse. Theda Bara is nothing if not a testament to the potential of inter-gernationality. 

When you enter the Brick– after inevitably bumping into someone exiting the dressing room directly next to the building’s main entrance — you’re met with a hazy darkly lit room filled with a long table and chairs with stools accenting the perimeter. The table set up, with RESERVED signs at both of the table’s heads, looks something like the set from Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table, a HUAC investigation room, or a Tenure committee meeting room– except there’s fog and a lot of it. My theater date inquired about its source as we got our tickets– “from a machine” the person sitting behind the ticket booth informed us. Entering the theater, the layout eviscerates any notion of a stage yet confirms an experience of spectatorship. My friend and I hesitated before choosing seats towards the back of the room, a stone’s throw from one of the two mirror-covered walls. We were two and three seats away from the head of the table, where David would come to sit. Above us was a row of lamps, and on the sides of the theater’s walls were sets of sconces. An eerie atmosphere was most certainly achieved.

Because we were all, for the most part, seated in front of a table, everyone was using the flat space in front of them to tap away on their phones or rest their elbows. As soon as the production manager notified us the table was about to be used, we all reeled back and shoved our varying objects away. Had I not been taking notes, I would’ve sat on my hands for the duration of the show– they seemed to mean business. It turns out, David would use the surface of the table as an elevated stage for parts of the play.

David waltzed in wearing pinstriped pants, a white oxford, a maroon double-breast vest with room for a chained watch, and a tie. Already, in just moving through the room, you could tell he was in character– erect, alert, composed, ignited, and ready to explode. He started the show speaking as Theda Bara, the silent screen legend. A Jewish woman from Ohio would go on to symbolize an erotic vamp and help to introduce the narrative archetype of the femme fatale. On Set, which features four characters, begins by telling a story of Theda’s survival from desertion in the Sahara Desert. As the light (done by Stacey Derosier) perfectly hit David’s face and reflected in the mirror behind him, he recounted a story of abandonment enlivening Bara’s persona as she describes the experience of being parched, hungry, and wrapped herself in a dark shawl for protection as her thick eyeliner smudged and ran down her face. Theda, in her recounting, introduces her two most foundational characteristics: exoticness and indomitability. If there is a crisis in this show, it’s that even the mighty Theda will fail to live up to the latter quality. It’s hard not to interpret associating Theda with locations like the Sahara as the studio’s tactic response to her Judaism. Merlo, conscious of this, uses the studio maneuver, or the sheer confusion of what to make of a dark-haired olive-skinned woman years before Sontag, as a way to associate Theda and her survival with the supernatural; her ability to eclipse the human form. On being found she utters, “The men were frightened. Always frightened– frightened of what they do not understand.” And this in a sense appears to be the crux of the play, or at least its titular character. How is it that a woman created by the public could be misunderstood precisely by the collective that made her? 

The initial expression of Theda’s remorse leads the way to the second narrative of the show: a tale of a gay detective (Detective Finale), one-half of what seems to be a New York Upper West Side couple (or so I thought) learning that his adopted child Iras had gone missing. Iras, born female, has decided they’re genderqueer, the gumshoe announces with confusion. The Detective doesn’t know what it means to be genderqueer and because he is seemingly a well-intentioned man and father, he recounts previously suggesting to Iras that perhaps they might be trans. The detective’s confusion over the state of a non-defined gender is transposed with an anecdote of Iras getting their first period: ‘What do I do?’ the then small red-headed thin and tall child cried while running into her fathers’ room. The parent and child have shifted roles. The younger generation has taken up the pedagogical mantle.  But now, Iras has left their fathers to flounder. Why did they leave? Detective Finale says they were always taken care of. The Detective clocked their absence one day when arriving home and hearing silence emanating– where normally the sounds of their friends and TikToks would bellow– from their room. Trouble ensued over how to file a missing person’s report. If the fathers write that “they are missing,” the general populous may believe two people to be missing. But Iras would never return if a poster bearing their likelihood says “she?” It would be with reason. She isn’t missing. They are. 

Next, the story of Ulysses, a Theda super fan who accompanied Theda films at a local movie house because church work didn’t pay. As the accompanist, he accentuates Theda’s performance on screen, adding more drama to her probing stare, and the sensuousness of her costumes, most often referenced as including gold coiled snakes wrapped around her breast with dark green emeralds for their eyes. Ulysses is so dedicated to his pursuit, that one day while playing, entranced by Theda’s performance and the scintillating gaze of the audience up at the screen, he orgasms at his piano bench. “I played for her!” He shrieks. Ulysses, whose childhood was marked by physical abuse from his neglected mother and sexual assault by his alcoholic gambling, and philandering father, meets Theda one day after standing outside her home in front of impressive gates marked with the letters T and B. A red car pulls up and she appears. She catches Ulysses’ eye, signs a soggy piece of paper, tells Ulysses to get into the car, which he does, and then never leaves her side.

The final character is Iras the most supporting role who helps mark the progression of all the other characters’ journeys– the Detective’s journey in finding them, Theda’s journey in living until 139, and Ulysses’ journey in never being able to get away from Theda. 

Because this is a one-person show, much of the narrative exists in the space of transitioning between characters, and the audience’s job is to be attentive to who is speaking when: it is almost vital to do this if you want to trace the narrative. Unlike another recent one-person show Vanya, the one-man version of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya with Andrew Scott on The West End, where Scott had different tells for each character (a red tea towel for Sonja, a ball for Michael, sunglasses for Ivan, a gold chain necklace for Helena which she delicately thumbed while reciting her lines), the transitions here were based solely on David’s physicality. There couldn’t be a better person cast for this job. David, so deeply grounded in his body, has a natural balletic quality in merely inhabiting space. His hands, which I examined intently being so too close to him, have a soft lived-in quality that evokes a sense of great wisdom calm, and kindness. Every time he moved them, I felt his performance heighten and gain further dimension. He wears a wedding ring for the role of The Detective that fits so seamlessly and naturally on his hand, Similarly, his forehead is marked by a couple of protruding veins that accentuate his emanating the ecstasy and tragedy of each of the character’s lives.  David has such an innate sensuality, which while surely the work of years of training, doesn’t come across as technical but deeply ingrained. 

The initial transition from Theda to the Detective was foundational in understanding the plot. The Detective goes searching for Iras who ends up in a town called Baranook (the name of Theda Bara’s estate in Nova Scotia). The contrast between Theda’s historicity and the iconcalisity of her sexuality worked as a perfect foil for the Detective’s confusion of conceptions of gender in the 2020s. Unlike most attempts at cross-generation comparisons, Merlo’s comes across deftly. There is a clear and concerted effort on the part of The Detective to understand. He has not merely cast it aside because it is not part of his own experience. However, the inclusion of this confusion, the reference to Tik Tok, a thing his child does that he knows about, the idea of being transgender, expressing ambiguity over how everyone can be called “they,” seemed to me as an effort to comment on the context of when the play was made and performed. The Detective as the stand-in baby boomer (at one point Iras recites a line discussing her father’s “Boomer Trauma”), complicated slightly by the fact of his sexuality, displays an admirable open mind. David’s command allows for the perfect amount of humor and irony as Detective Finale makes quips about inclusivity and self-expression—when the Detective arrives in Baranook, he wonders if Iras’ complaint that the not-inclusive-enough pride flag in their home was what made them run away. This cross-temporal generational mash is a work of real craft. 

While the opening lines about Theda’s supernaturalness’ made it clear this work wouldn’t follow a traditional narrative (although we do learn that Iras’ bedroom was littered with Theda posters and in attempting to find themselves they run towards their idol), the dismissal of more traditional moments of crises and inciting incidents made me crave more about the assortment of people before me. A profound admiration for Theda is apparent, and Merlo’s choice to immortalize her is novel. He could have chosen a more well-known celebrity (RuPaul comes to mind) to examine the ambiguity of celebrity and gender most often associated with camp figures. His selection points to an originality in vision. His use of references beyond the immediate zeitgeist comes across genuinely. I could imagine a young Merlo stumbling upon Theda, much like Iras had, and becoming obsessed with her. Merlo said he was led to Theda as a young child obsessed with horror films. He spent hours of his youth hours watching Theda on the television in his childhood home. But sometimes selecting a figure of such personal importance makes articulating that figure’s grandeur harder. The subject’s importance has become so important it’s almost been engrained and exists as bespoke shorthand made up of sentimental sensations. Their worth is of such unchecked importance to you, that you almost forget to advocate for them. Advocation is implied when the subject is your own North Star.

Theda dies in the last scene of the play. But because it was unclear to me why Theda was needed as the lynchpin in these stories, I had a hard time seeing the resolution of this play as anything other than an end. I didn’t feel particularly bad for her or any of the characters, not because I wished harm upon them, but because I never felt I got to know them, beyond David’s performance, which was met with the hearty applause he so deserved. The play ended as it had started: with David walking, but where an ignition had previously been, he now walked with a calm resolution. And the next night, he would do it all over again.