What Might Kafka Have Written If He’d Been a Woman? Maybe ‘Breadcrumbs’

During more than a decade of reviewing theater, I have never called a play “Kafkaesque.” It’s too cheap-and-easy a descriptor, in my view. But perhaps the time has come when the shoe really fits. 

In Breadcrumbs, at off the WALL productions (through April 18), a nurse’s aide is testing an elderly woman for signs of dementia. The aide says she’s going to recite ten words and will ask the woman to repeat them later. That is absurd. These short-term memory checks typically use three words. You would need to be a cognitive ninja to recall a string of ten, wouldn’t you? 

Then the aide carefully enunciates the ten. “Squirrel,” she says. “Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel.” And what happens from there makes the play one heck of a swan song. 

Breadcrumbs is off the WALL’s last presentation in the Pittsburgh area. The company, known and loved locally since 2007, has plans to move on. I will say more about this later. So don’t forget. 

Strange Parallels

Meanwhile, start with Franz Kafka himself. He was a brilliant but scrambled writer. Although he wrote short stories that shine like gems, he didn’t manage to finish any of his novels. Those that we have were put together posthumously, by his literary executor, from Kafka’s jumbled piles of chapter drafts and notes. 

Much more recently, the American playwright Jennifer Haley has given us Breadcrumbs—a two-character play in which one character displays some eerie resemblances to Kafka. The elderly woman, Alida, is a writer. She’s renowned for her short stories. Lately she has been trying to finish a more ambitious piece, but finds herself increasingly scrambled. 

One difference is that Kafka died in middle age, with his mental faculties intact, whereas Alida—played by Virginia Wall Gruenert, off the WALL’s cofounder and artistic director—is losing a race against late-life mental decline. The stage is strewn with Post-It notes that she scribbled and stuck or dropped everywhere. “I should write my memories before my brain turns brown,” Alida says, and for that, though she hates to admit it, she needs help. A literary executive assistant would be ideal. 

Luckily or maybe not, a candidate applies for the role. On one of her in-home visits, young nurse’s aide Beth (Erika Cuenca) announces that she no longer cares to work in the healthcare system. Beth offers to be a sort of Boswell to Alida’s Johnson. Or as persons less familiar with 18th-century classics might put it, Robin to her Batwoman. 

It turns out to be a match made by The Joker. 

Stranger Doings

At many points in the play, the seriocomically surreal interactions of the women feel head-spinningly Kafkaesque. While Alida’s dementia begins to manifest more frequently and profoundly, Beth stays busy proving that you don’t need dementia to be disoriented. 

The situation isn’t entirely chaotic. The younger woman seems in many respects an intelligent, capable sidekick. She’s quick to step in when Alida loses her bearings, and equally quick to call BS when Alida’s behavior merits it. The trouble is that we all have self-defeating tendencies, and Beth tends to follow hers to the max. Despite her assets, she can’t hold a job for more than the proverbial minute. She seeks refuge in boyfriends, but doesn’t know how to hold ‘em or when to fold ‘em. (As Beth reveals in her periodic freak-outs over guy trouble, running a kitchen knife across the vinyls in your boyfriend’s music library probably isn’t the best way to settle differences, nor does it seem wise to bet that your next lover will be getting a divorce any day now.) 

Further, the two women are temperamental opposites. Alida is a private person, like Scrooge, solitary and self-contained as an oyster. A lifetime of keeping company with her writing has left her an aging recluse. Beth is a compulsive connector, only feeling alive when she has someone around. The opposites become evident in comic-ironic exchanges. E.g., Alida: “What’s wrong with being alone?” Beth: “Nothing, if you’re good at it.” And when old-school Alida scoffs at the notion of visiting a therapist—“Therapy is using someone else to see yourself”—Beth fires back “How else do you do it?” 

Can two extremes merge to create a healthy whole? That is the question, or at least one of several the play poses. Alida and Beth, the play’s alpha and beta, do share a common trait. They’re both dreamers. Alida made her mark writing bizarre fantasies; one of her story anthologies was dubbed “fractured fairy tales for the literati.” Speaking of which, Breadcrumbs is titled after the folktale of Hansel and Gretel. They leave a trail of crumbs in the forest to find their way home, except birds eat the crumbs. Except in Alida’s mind, the eaters are squirrels.

Which raises additional questions. Is the entire play presented as if perceived through the fracturing mind of Alida? Maybe, sometimes. Do the characters at times appear to be enacting people other than themselves, and do they time-travel? Yes and yes. Therefore one must conclude, Kafkaesque-ly, that the play itself is disorienting. 

But the disorientation is marvelous. My wife, who came with me on opening night, enjoyed the play and says it has made her think. Thinking is good. Just don’t overdo it. Give your senses a chance to marvel at the play’s physicality. Beth goes far beyond speaking her dreams; she pirouettes and dances them. Alida, the more stolid of the pair, often telegraphs changes of mood—and perhaps changes of being—through her face. One moment it’s the smooth, beaming face of a child; then it’s the haggard face of a hag. 

Does Breadcrumbs have a happy ending? I won’t tell. In fact I am not sure that I can tell whether it does. But I can say this: See for yourself. 

Credits and Ticket Info

Jennifer Haley’s Breadcrumbs is directed by Ingrid Sonnichsen. Act promptly to reserve seats online, as only three performances remain through April 18, in an intimate house that puts everyone close to the action: Carnegie Stage, 25 W. Main St., Carnegie. 

The executive producer and lighting designer is Juliette Louste. The set designer is Stephanie Mayer-Staley, with video projections by Owen Hindley, mesmerizing music composed by Iris Thorarins, and costumes and props by Laura Irene Young. Production management is by Adrienne Wells and the stage manager is Caroline Hall.  

About off the WALL

Off the WALL productions was founded 19 years ago by theater artist Virginia Wall Gruenert and her husband, Hans Gruenert, a business expert and arts enthusiast. The company focused on modern and contemporary plays, emphasizing the work of women writers, actors, and directors. The result has been a stellar run of adventurous shows unlikely to be produced elsewhere in the Pittsburgh region. Memorable plays that this reviewer has seen at off the WALL included Liz Duffy Adams’s Or, the late Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, and my personal favorite, Sarah Kosar’s hilarious but moving Mumburger—about a young woman and her dad who learn that their deceased mother/wife has willed her remains to be eaten by them. Other patrons have their favorites. Some even cite Lungs, by the quirky male writer Duncan Macmillan. 

Under the Gruenerts’ direction, off the WALL also co-produced outside the Pittsburgh area, notably in New York City with Nancy Manocherian’s new-play incubator company, the cell. And four years ago, the Gruenerts moved to Iceland. (That’s right, not New York or LA: idyllic Iceland. You want “adventurous,” you got it.) Local Pittsburgh-wise presence has been sustained by Erika Cuenca, acting as off the WALL’s associate artistic director as well as acting onstage. But now all things status quo are ending. 

After Breadcrumbs closes here it will play in Reykjavik, then possibly at venues in Europe where new collaborations are being explored. Off the WALL ceases to exist locally. Its home venue, Carnegie Stage—managed thus far by Cuenca, and located just a few miles from Downtown Pittsburgh—is in the process of being sold. The prospects for a theater-friendly buyer are reportedly good. 

Entertainment Central wishes Ginny and Hans Gruenert a heartfelt Happy Trails. For updates on their new adventures, check the website of off the WALL’s successor entity, ViVa Holding of Iceland. ViVa retains Erika Cuenca as associate artistic director for the United States, with Juliette Louste aboard as associate AD for Iceland and the EU. 

Mike Vargo, a Pittsburgh-based independent writer, contributes theater reviews and other pieces to Entertainment Central. 

Photography is by Heather Mull.

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