In Jessica Dickey’s witty and absorbing new play, “The Guard,” we are referred constantly to an unseen painting: Rembrandt’s famous “Aristotle With [or Contemplating] a Bust of Homer,” where the philosopher rests his right hand on the head of the blind poet, a mysterious image of classical philosophy and ancient epic poetry in contemplative juxtaposition.
But in a sense, the audience is also that painting. The play is set in a museum, with the unseen painting hanging on the fourth wall, facing us, making us inevitably part of what the play’s characters contemplate as they are drawn into the Rembrandt. Meanwhile, of course, we can imagine the painting contemplating us, as well, as paintings do.
Then, several surprising transformations later, the painting materializes not just in our minds but as a dark, luminous image, looming at the back of the stage, summarizing and paralleling the characters on stage (this took my breath away) but also Ms. Dickey’s thought, action, emotion and even story.
I hope this doesn’t make the play sound academic. It isn’t — it’s funny, sweet, melancholy and emotionally engaging. I’m just trying to find my way to its warm, richly beating heart.
The image made me think first of the once-famous “The Consolation of Philosophy,” a sixth-century work best known through Chaucer and “The Lord of the Rings.” But in the painting it is the philosopher who seems to look to poetry for consolation. And then there’s us, watching, finding our consolation — because that’s exactly what I found — in the play.
The real subject is the consolation of theater: theater that takes the thorny reality of life and looks right through it to find an impossible consolation even in approaching death. Or call it the playwright contemplating the audience, as both contemplate art and the inevitable.
“There was never yet philosopher,” says Shakespeare’s Leonato (and in a comedy, at that), who “could endure the toothache patiently.” But perhaps as an audience, we can, through the medium of art.
Ms. Dickey’s setup is simplicity itself, honored by City Theatre’s elegantly spare but hardly simple production. Into a museum gallery of old masters, of which we see only the gilt frames, come a troubled young art student and three museum guards. One is near retirement: He’s our Rembrandt, and maybe our Aristotle. He has a young colleague, and there’s also a novice guard, mohawk-coifed, but with dimensions to reveal.
And then the museum melts away and we’re somewhere else. Then somewhere else again, way back in time. And somewhere else. It’s a 90-minute journey of revelation, not mystical, really, because even the ancients turn out to be cranky people with toothaches and worse, but imaginative and strangely comforting.
High in the excellence of the evening is the casting by director Tracy Brigden: Five fine actors each play two parts, doubling in this way not to save salaries but because the characters they play echo and comment on each other across the ages.
At the center is Andrew May as the older guard and also Rembrandt, emotionally and intellectually insightful (in both cases) with a light touch, thanks to both actor and playwright. Melinda Helfrich, away from Pittsburgh too long, is a sort of plot device as the art student and then bewitches as a dewy Dutch maidservant.
Stephen James Anthony is a treat as the novice who surprises us with his layers, although his other character is perhaps Ms. Dickey’s least necessary. Billy Hepfinger lightens the mood as the younger guard. The play’s astonishment, as both actor and character, is Raphael Nash Thompson, who bursts upon us in a monologue you will have to experience to believe, and then in his second character supplies the dark chiaroscuro that is at the heart of Rembrandt’s genius.
The magic of “The Guard” draws on Narelle Sissons’ scene design of frames within frames, also heavy with Rembrandtian dark and gold; on Andrew David Ostrowski’s lights, ditto; and on Eric Shimelonis’ deftly occasional music. Orchestrating all these elements is Ms. Brigden, a director so unobtrusive that we may often take her excellence for granted.
The scholarship behind the play is controversial. Was it Aristotle or Apelles? Did Homer actually write those great poems? Was he black? When is a philosopher an artist, and vice versa? Consider these and others if you must. But they ultimately fade into the pure human experience on which all questions, and especially Ms. Dickey’s play, depend.
Senior theater critic Christopher Rawson: 412-216-1944.
First Published: March 22, 2017, 5:28 p.m.