Show Response: Bonefruit

by Ali Sousa

Leah Plante-Wiener’s Bonefruit brings us into a stunningly expansive world in its thirtyish-minute runtime. There's a chapel in the desert; a young, solitary priestess; and a traveler, returning to the chapel for the first time in two years. Lark, the priestess, is reading a favorite passage from her scripture about a Beast, whose teeth, when planted, bore fruit for hungry villagers. Anhedonia, the traveler, has come to give her a gift: dried flowers, a rarity in the arid wasteland. Anhedonia is a harvester of teeth and farmer of bonefruit; Lark’s father recently died after consuming it.

There’s a weighty, complicated, beautiful thing between these young women — Anhedonia’s yearning to be good despite her sometimes violent, morally grey lifestyle that’s necessitated by the world they live in, and Lark’s pain and isolation contrasted with her hope for something better; specifically, her belief in Anhedonia’s capacity to be better, or maybe that she has always been good despite it all. Anhedonia comes to the chapel in the hopes of receiving Lark’s absolution despite not being sure she deserves it; Lark makes it clear there’s nothing to absolve.

Plante-Wiener’s writing is poetic, dense, mythical in its worldbuilding — but easily comprehensive and inviting even at its most complex. (Laia Comas’ appropriately sparse direction at the Tank allowed the rich text to be the focal point of the play.) We don’t get the full story of Lark and Anhedonia or their world, but what we do get is so gorgeous and expressive that it feels like we’ve known them for as long as they’ve known each other.

I return to Bonefruit the way Lark returns to her favorite passage. I would watch a whole season of TV set in this universe if I could. For now, after also seeing the play performed at NYU this spring, I’m content to see Lark and Anhedonia’s tender reconciliation again and again in various cozy, unconventional spaces. 

Bonefruit ran at The Tank August 17-19 as part of LimeFest.