‘The Confessional’ @ Artstillery
—Ryan Maffei
Sometimes fine art comes in strange packages.
As you walk into the Artstillery and take your seat, you see before you two bathroom stalls. No, not set-design bathroom stalls — actual bathroom stalls that (like the accompanying sink and the two trash cans) have been pilfered from someplace where they were once useful. (The sink’s hose just hangs there limply, silver and severed.) You run your eyes across the desecrated red doors, and catch chestnuts such as: “BOOBies!” … or “LEGALIZE WEED” … or “Hello darkness my old friend/I’ve come to poop on you again.” Or the positively surreal “EVER DRINK BAILEY’S FROM A SHOE?” It not unlike having the very concept of “lowbrow” manifested right in front of you. Ahh, but you don’t buy into that long-busted lie that there’s actually such a thing as high and low culture — do ya?
Here’s what it’s like to be a theatre critic and realize you are watching something truly fantastic. You’ve done your bit — came in with the obligatory wide-open mind, activated your BS filter, begun to pay flawless attention. Five minutes pass; nothing misses, nothing offends or lets you down. A production that goes on for what? — near ten, fifteen, twenty minutes —without one problem is bound to be working very hard, and some kind of pleasure is coming from every corner, in every size.
You’re caught up. Your guard has wilted; your emotions are unlocked and active. Yes, you think as you near intermission, I’m fully rooting for it. Right there, stay right there — don’t stop, and don’t move an inch. The miracle of art is blooming vibrantly inside you. You’re captive, and thrilled about it.
An almost religiously vérité effort from playwright Bre Spink and director Erin Kelly Noble (if you’ve never seen her act, you’ve missed some magic), The Confessional limits its stylization to the lightest symbolic touch — a pane of stained glass hanging in front of a light that clicks on any time a character decides to break free from the claustrophobic chaos, and let us in on what they can’t say out loud.
Flirting fails and succeeds; relationships repair and break down; traumas are unearthed and created anew; misunderstandings are stumbled into or crawled out of; every flavor of joy shoots up, constantly and randomly, like an out-of-whack whack-a-mole game. Even a sporting round of tampon pong is enjoyed (or… invented?). People defecate; people fornicate.
Max (Jae Payne) is the apparent lothario who yearns to show someone sweet their true colors – mainly the gold of their good heart. Virginia (Katie Wetch) is that wounded sweet girl, running a gamut from neurotic comedy to a cheek-drenching vulnerability. Charlotte (Jaclyn Thomas) and Jay (Hannah Alyea) are best friends, oversexed and undersexed respectively, whose old bond’s treacherously frayed state is invisible, until it’s not.
Dio Garner plays a long-suffering bartender (and also an antonymic dealer), while Andy Searcy plays the creep we all pray stays out of this weirdly safe space. Each one of them achieves the kind of stunning, rivetingly textural work you always hope to see or do, depending on what side of the footlights you’re on. Yet I have this cynical suspicion that none of them will win BroadwayWorld Dallas awards for their efforts.
But I’m telling you — you’d have to really look hard to find performances as stellar as these, and this is hardly an untalented town. Over the course of two acts, you witness the entire spectrum of human emotion, in the single most cramped environment you’ve ever seen depicted. When it heats up, you slip out of your jacket; when things turn icy, you pull it back on. Expertly executed meltdowns shake you, though these are some amazingly gracious actors, so giving with each other and the audience. The first half is all messy, unrelentingly believable fun. In the second act, sobriety having surrendered, things get quite dark — but the characters begin turning their confessionals on each other, and pain transfigures into the sweetest mutual safety, or honesty’s raw catharsis.
Big shoutouts to stage manager Miranda O’Connor and assistant stage manager Bree Han, and whoever of the aforementioned participants aced the light work and filled the spaces between scenes with irresistible pop — irresistible pop unencumbered by bizarre choreography, because in this show, you believe every beat. Big shoutout to Brandon Wetch for truly scary fight choreo, and to intimacy director Claire Fountain for her usual heart-racing and/or -tugging work, which elicited a chorus of “oooooh’s” at a key moment. (She’s behind much of the show’s blissful and abundant gay content, and also nails some “funny sex”.) And a shoutout to you, one that sounds like “HEY! You really shouldn’t miss this!”
The job of a critic is to locate the finest work on offer, and insist you rush to see it. It’s not a sin to miss it, no. But you’ll walk out of this baño ecstatic.
WHEN: April 2–11, 2026
WHERE: Artstillery, 723 Fort Worth Ave., Dallas
WEB: artstillery.org
