Reviews

Review: Invasive Species Is an Insane Drama School Memoir

Maia Novi’s new play opens off-Broadway.

Zachary Stewart

Zachary Stewart

| Off-Broadway |

May 15, 2024

Sam Gonzalez, Julian Sanchez, Maia Novi, Raffi Donatich, and Alexandra Maurice appear in Novi’s Invasive Species, directed by Michael Breslin, at the Vineyard’s Dimson Theatre.
(© Julieta Cervantes)

Great drama can be found in the chasm between expectation and reality. This is as true onstage as it is in life, as any actor-turned-waiter or novelist-turned-“content writer” can tell you. For budding performer Maia Novi, the gap opens so wide, it threatens to swallow her whole — the subject of her new play Invasive Species, now running off-Broadway at the Vineyard’s Dimson Theatre.

Despite a cinematic opening hook from director Michael Breslin, Invasive Species seems to promise a maté-flavored version of a story that’s been done to death: Maia (the playwright portraying a version of herself) grew up in Argentina worshiping at the altar of Hollywood. She is bit by the acting bug (Julian Sanchez wearing a bug mask, which includes an obscene proboscis). This takes her to prestigious drama schools in Paris, London, and New Haven. Her industry showcase at the last is fast approaching, and she’s been practicing hard on her American accent, modeled after Gwyneth Paltrow. This will be the make-or-break moment at which she either secures an agent and embarks on the road to superstardom or bombs out and begins searching for fallback positions as a teacher. So far, so boring.

But, after a doctor prescribes her some new medication, she blacks out and wakes up in a juvenile psych ward. How did she get there? And with her entire family back in Argentina, how will she ever get out? It’s Fame meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for the rest of this 80-minute thrill ride, which questions the sanity of anyone who would want to get into show business and calls bullshit on the self-styled purveyors of poetic truth.

With surefooted flair, Breslin proves more than game to helm a narrative that leaps between scenes of Maia auditioning for an arty new biopic about Eva Perón and scenes of her trading jello in the hospital cafeteria. Memories of the fateful night before she was committed trickle back, vibrantly re-created by the supporting cast. Although there are just four of them (Raffi Donatich, Sam Gonzales, Alexandra Maurice, and Julian Sanchez), they perfectly conjure the frenzied horror of being at a party full of coked-up Yale Drama students.

Julian Sanchez plays the director, and Maia Novi plays Maia (playing Eva Perón) in Novi’s Invasive Species, directed by Michael Breslin, at the Vineyard’s Dimson Theatre.
(© Julieta Cervantes)

Donatich is particularly memorable as Maia’s ghoulishly enthusiastic agent (Cole McCarty, with a keen understanding of the power of accessories, costumes her in a pink bucket hat and sparkly glasses) and the mean head nurse (an angry pink headband). Sanchez is hilarious as a pretentious British filmmaker who prods Maia to be more authentic with her Argentinean accent. Gonzalez serves laugh-out-loud comedy as both of Maia’s rich parents, who never let her get a word in during the precious few moments she’s allowed a phone call. And Maurice is sneakily alluring as Akila, the unofficial mayor of the psych ward, who leaves Maia with some sage advice on how to get discharged: “All you gotta do is act normal. Pretend.”

As talented as Novi is, we’re never fully convinced that Maia is entirely sane — or reliable as a narrator. But that’s part of what makes Invasive Species so watchable, as new scenes and bits of information emerge to skew our perspective. Disorienting lighting (by Yichen Zhou) and sound (by Jessie Char and Maxwell Neely-Cohen) contribute to the unstable onstage world that Novi and Breslin have created — an ever-shifting mirage that refuses to allow us to get comfortable.

Perhaps that is the key to success in this industry: Never allow yourself to settle into a pattern, and never feel fully at home.

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