There’s a tremendous amount of tension underlying nearly every moment of “Cost of Living,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Martyna Majok that Oakland Theater Project is now giving its Bay Area premiere. It’s an intimate, four-person play focusing on two people with disabilities (played by actors with disabilities) and their caregivers, but it’s also about class and privilege and preconceptions. Every bit of dialogue is packed with subtext, as mutual wariness and hopes and old wounds hamper the characters’ ability to communicate with each other. Played with palpable guardedness by Carla Gallardo, Jess is a desperately poor young Ivy League graduate working three jobs just to survive, seemingly always on the edge of some kind of
explosion but holding it in. She’s newly hired by John, a wealthy PhD student with cerebral palsy, as a part-time assistant to help with tasks that are hard for him to manage. Matty Placencia’s coolly charismatic John is prickly and standoffish at times, solicitous at others. There’s a growing fondness between the two, but he’s as wary of Jess as she is of him, and they’re always challenging one another and putting each other on the spot in a relentless push and pull. Daniel Duque-Estrada exudes welcoming warmth and chatty amiability as Eddie, an out-of-work trucker and recovering alcoholic taking care of his separated soon-to-be-ex-wife after she’s been left quadriplegic in the wake of an accident. Christine Bruno is all warring impulses as Ani, full of resentment for her estranged spouse and incredulous that he has the gall to be there at all, but there’s an ease and familiarity between them that makes her feel as fond as she is furious. All the scenes are full of aching vulnerability and reluctant intimacy. Every character feels as if they’re balancing on a precipice, whether it’s emotional, financial or physical or any combination thereof. That intimacy is only accentuated by director Emilie Whelan’s compelling staging, mere inches from the audience in OTP’s performance space in the back room of an Oakland art supplies store. The show’s opening was pushed back a week to accommodate a late-breaking casting change, but you would never know it from the polished performances on stage. Playwright Majok, whose “Sanctuary City” played Berkeley Repertory Theatre two years ago, deftly suggests deep interior worlds from a few two-person scenes in which characters inarticulately struggle to connect and communicate. That potent spareness is mirrored in Whelan’s set, with just a few scattered furnishings effectively conjuring very different homes and lives, aided by Kevin Myrick’s atmospheric lighting and the different styles of mood
music in Ray Archie’s sound design. The play exists in two separate worlds, parallel threads following each pair, but really all the individual characters are worlds unto themselves, colliding awkwardly with each other as they struggle to connect. There’s a lot of sadness and heartbreak in the play, but it’s also wonderfully funny, and the infectious discomfort of the characters makes the release and relief of laughter even more potent. Superbly written, staged and performed, it’s a riveting show that keeps you on the edge of your seat, hoping for the best but bracing for the worst. The people in the play have to rely so deeply on each other, never really knowing or fully trusting that they can. By Martyna Majok, presented by Oakland Theater Project March 30 FLAX art & design, 1501 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland 110 minutes, no intermission $10-$60;