Cinnamon Schultz, R.H. Wilhoit, Elaine Elizabeth Clifford, and Julie Shaw in Everybody (Brandon Parigo)
In the 15th century play Everyman, the titular character is approached by Death and tasked with making an account of his life for God. Everyman searches for an important figure from his life to accompany him, and is let down by all of them, from Kindred and Fellowship to material Goods. In the end, only his Good Deeds can go with him.
Everyman is a straightforward Christian morality play, and not a work that most people would think was asking for a modern revamp. But that’s what Branden Jacobs-Jenkins did with his 2017 Everybody, resulting in a deviously clever update to some timeless philosophical ideas.
In terms of plot and structure, Everybody, now running at Kansas City Actors’ Theatre, only deviates slightly from the original. The character names are updated: Everybody now seeks comfort from entities like Cousin, Friendship, and Stuff. The intense religious focus of the original is eschewed. (Good Deeds—by which the play specifically meant good Christian deeds in service of the Church—is expanded to a greater sense of Love.)
The adaptation’s biggest change comes in the form of a novel casting device. A few actors have set roles (John Resenhouse as God, Cinnamon Schultz as Death, Teisha M. Bankston as Love, and Edelweiss Etherton and Bellamy Kelly alternating as Time), but most of the characters, including Everybody, are randomly assigned to a pool of actors via an on-stage lottery after the play has begun.
That means five core actors (Elaine Elizabeth Clifford, Dri Hernaez, Mateo Moreno, Julie Shaw, and R.H. Wilhoit) must memorize and rehearse all of these roles, and be prepared to play any of them on any given night. It’s likely that the particular combination of actors and characters seen by a given audience will not be repeated again in the show’s entire run. The concept adds a sense of excitement but it’s also thematically fitting, underscoring the randomness and universality of death. “Everybody” really can be anybody, and were any one of us tasked with presenting a report of our life before God, we would be just as lost.
The nature of the lottery system means audiences are bound to see standout performances that they can’t imagine being given by another actor. (Personally, I’m grateful I got to see Wilhoit’s fervent precision channeled into Friendship, delivering a brilliant and hilarious monologue that captures the generic malaise of so many friendships in the era of social media, with a frenetic intensity.) But there’s a beauty to the ephemeral nature of those performances and the specific pairings of various scene partners that really underscores the play’s most core themes or life, loss, and fleeting attachments.
Plus, the talent of the entire cast and the masterful direction of Vanessa Severo ensures that there are many other equally superb performances that we’ll never get to see. There aren’t too many plays that beg for rewatches but this is one.
“Everybody,” a production of Kansas City Actors Theatre, runs through March 22 at City Stage, on the lower level of Union Station, 30 W Pershing Rd, Kansas City, MO. For more information, visit www.kcactors.org.
