MONA ACTS, by Misha Berlinski
If it weren’t for the opiates in her system or the weed she used to reinforce the consequences of the capsules, Mona Zahid might need dealt with Thanksgiving higher — not hiding within the bed room of her Manhattan residence to hiding from his scolding family members whereas dinner is cooking, or showing solely to seize his pleasant beagle Barney and head for the entrance door. However in Misha Berlinski’s novel Mona Acts Out, she’s mainly very, very drained.
So when, on her approach by the foyer of the constructing, she finds in her mailbox a postcard from Milton Katz, the well-known Shakespearean director who for twenty years shepherded her appearing profession, its pitiful message grabs her fuzzy thoughts.
“I am Dying, Egypt, I am Dying” he scribbles, repurposing a line from Antony and Cleopatra, and although she’s effectively conscious of the charismatic Milton’s habits of shameless self-dramatization and exactly calibrated emotional manipulation, she worries that he is telling the reality. Ever since a #MeToo article in The New York Occasions received him fired from his personal storied East Village firm, The Dysfunction’s Rabble — the title is borrowed from “King Lear” — he lived in disgraced exile.
Mona, who was one in all his main women and stays at the least semi-loyal, hasn’t seen him in virtually a yr. Her impending change as Cleopatra for the group, with out him on the helm, solely fuels her nervousness. His postcard suggests he does.
She should go to him instantly, she decides, and she’s going to go. Which means an hours-long odyssey from Morningside Heights to Brooklyn Heights, however then once more, she’s fairly tall—and attempting to keep away from her Trump-voting father-in-law, who’s on the flawed facet of the Shakespeare authorship query, as is her physician husband. with whom he’s on vacation.
And so the plot is about in movement in Berlinski’s guide, which pulls inspiration from a 2017 article in The Occasions by Jessica Bennett, about 9 girls accusing the veteran playwright and inventive director Israel Horowitz of sexual misconduct.
It is unlikely to be fodder for a comic book guide, however Berlinsky (“Fieldwork”, “Peacekeeping”) does so by laughing, not at Milton’s errors, however on the ridiculousness of being human—particularly within the theater and particularly in New York. As Mona’s sidekick, the joy-seeking Barney is sort of a furry little clown.
Structured in 5 acts and an interlude, this psychologically sharp, Shakespeare-infused story is as a lot concerning the penalties of Milton’s downfall as it’s about its many causes over a few years. By the point of his expulsion, he’s one thing of a Lear determine, and Mona a form of middle-aged Cordelia. However the novel’s curiosity is much less about Milton than about her and different girls as soon as in his orbit who determine in Mona’s Thanksgiving.
As Susan Choi in “An exercise in trust,” Berlinski has a complicated understanding of the dynamics of predation, the psyche of performers, and the tradition of theater, particularly the extra uncooked, convention-busting inner-city.
Bold and extremely self-absorbed – Mona and Milton share these traits – Mona has at all times tolerated his aggressive swagger, his late-night cellphone calls, his continual inappropriateness. “He is kissed me greater than you,” she tells her husband. For her, enduring this was the value of creating nice artwork, a situation Milton was “completely clear to everybody”.
This places her at odds with Rachel, her favourite niece from school. The goal of Milton’s undesirable kisses as an intern at Rabble, she grew to become an nameless supply for the Occasions reporter. There’s additionally Mona’s ex-girlfriend Vanessa, Milton’s one-time younger discovery, who fell passionately in love with him, unaware of the hazard to his budding appearing profession if their relationship ended.
The journey of “Mona Acts Out” is insightful, hilariously numerous. His vacation spot is disappointment. Too neat, too smug, too contrived, the ending looks like a cop-out not as a result of it fails to wrap up the story in a selected approach or in any respect, however as a result of it places characters with deep and vital battle with one another in the identical small house and pretends to be a comfy desk .
Maybe Berlinski means this burst of peaceable coexistence as hopeful, even a metaphor for a much less fractured United States: its indignant outdated males and outraged girls having fun with a second of lightening.
Nevertheless it looks as if a deliberate avoidance of confrontation – as if our narrator has averted his gaze and stepped again, buzzing merrily. On this, nevertheless, he merely follows the sample of the grasp. Shakespeare’s comedies typically behave equally, culminating in scenes of concord that the playwright has primarily conjured up.
Mona Acts Out can also be a comedy, however its affinity for Shakespeare gravitates at the least as a lot to tragedies, and on the heart of the novel stays a maelstrom of persistent trauma. A patch of compounding darkness would not go amiss in its closing moments, simply earlier than Act V’s curtain falls.
MONA ACTS | By Misha Berlinski | Liveright | 304 pages | $27.99
