Tarker, Kate

Not quite a comedy and not quite a thriller, Kate Tarker’s play is an antic study of two women preparing for a game (or possibly an attack).In a basement apartment somewhere in Germany, Faith (Ariana Venturi) chain smokes cigarettes and drinks endless cups of coffee. Novella (Nadine Malouf) chomps her way through a bag of spicy chips. They argue, they dance, they try on clubwear, they play anxious games. Like lots of characters in lots of plays before them, they are waiting. But not for God or liberation or even a gentleman caller, not exactly. They are waiting for the man who is coming to kill them.This is the trap laid by Kate Tarker’s antic, frantic “Montag,” at Soho Rep, directed by Dustin Wills. Not quite a comedy and not quite a tragedy, sometimes a thriller and often something more bizarre, the play is a hymn to female friendship and, in harsher music, a study of the threat of intimate partner violence. No place, the show intimates, is safe. Not the kitchen table, not the stage.It takes time to figure all of this out, which may signal confidence in the audience on the part of Wills and Tarker, or brash unconcern. Lisa Laratta’s set, a box inside Soho Rep’s already petite stage, is an abstract rendering of a living room; Masha Tsimring’s lights suggest a perpetual midnight. Details about where we are and when we are and the contours of the women’s relationship are kept similarly shadowed. It’s exciting, in a way, this theater as jigsaw, and there’s satisfaction as each piece snaps together. But the murk of these early scenes can also feel like feints until the rules of the game come clear. Or nearly clear. Are these women’s sports and rehearsals preparations to meet death or to cheat it?There’s a realistic drama lurking inside “Montag,” a story of how a Turkish sex worker and an American military operative became friends, how they moved in together, whether this caused any ructions back on the base. That’s a drama I wouldn’t mind seeing, and it might have more geopolitical resonance, which this version gestures toward and then dismisses. But Tarker doesn’t trust that story, or she dreams bigger and weirder. Both, maybe. (The German setting, Novella’s job and the murderous inclinations of her common-law husband also indicate a dialogue with Büchner’s “Woyzeck,” a classic of German proto-expressionism.)Certainly “Montag” is more tethered to reality than Tarker’s previous play, the Alfred Jarry-ish farce “Thunderbodies.” Yet only in its late moments, when the two-character piece expands, careening into operatic hallucination, does it take on weight. The play makes sense as dreams make sense. When life feels like a nightmare, Wills’s production suggests, it should move like a nightmare, too.Malouf, always a welcome presence, infuses Novella with an unvarnished sensuality and a party-at-the-end-of-the-world abandon, born of having nothing left to lose. Novella can seem indolent, unconcerned, until she begins to scream. Venturi’s Faith holds herself more tightly, a jittery presence still trying to juggle odds, plans and probabilities even when logic has clearly failed. The less said about the characters played by Jacob Orr and Dane Suarez, an operatic tenor, the better, though they are played finely.If “Montag” conveys a stylistic restlessness, that puts it in good company. Two weeks ago, Sarah Benson, an artistic director of Soho Rep for the past 15 years, announced that she would step down at the close of this current season. Meropi Peponides, at Soho Rep since 2014, will depart as well. Under Benson’s tenure, the company has continued as a home for formal experimentation and audacious swings. In “Montag,” not all of those swings connect. But how wonderful that Soho Rep has made a space where artists can take them.MontagThrough Nov. 13 at Soho Rep, Manhattan; sohorep.org. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. More