Review: Rachel Crowl Takes on a Whole Town in The Nicest Body Ever Seen Around These Parts

Josep Maria Miró’s The Nicest Body Ever Seen Around These Parts doesn’t take place in autumn,  and it’s not an American play, but its themes fit this time of year perfectly. Family, trauma, mortality, and grief are packed into the one-two punch of Halloween and Thanksgiving in a way we largely ignore. One holiday contains an ever-unkept promise of fixing familial relationships with “gratitude.” The other is about death. Is this the autumn you’ll confront these melancholy, honest things? Or will you continue to drown your invasive thoughts in pumpkin spice lattes?

For those brave enough to put down their seasonal beverages, The Nicest Body Ever Seen Around These Parts offers catharsis. Winner of Spain’s National Prize for Dramatic Literature, it’s a gorgeous, prickly piece of profound intelligence and sadness, a one-actor meditation on the human condition brought to stunning life by actor Rachel Crowl. The Obie Award winner gives a mesmerizing performance, portraying seven characters over the course of the evening, shifting in age and gender.

The “nicest body” is Albert, a seventeen-year-old kid lying mutilated and abandoned in a field. In a series of monologues, people from his small town, like his mother and school principal, react to the facts of his life and death. They reveal backstories that are bleak, complex, and strangely beautiful. The specifics of the seedy underbelly are unique to the town, but the darkness is one that anyone can recognize.

The plot doesn’t advance so much as it unwinds, spooling further out from Albert’s death not only into the wider community but also into the past. We learn that Albert’s father, Ramis, also suffered an untimely death. It was public, like Albert’s, and similarly involves the perils of sexuality, control, violence, and what happens when someone feels entitled to another’s body.

The writing is masterful, with seven unique characters unknowingly in conversation, echoing one another and giving voice to the most unspeakable depths of the human experience. In less skilled hands, this play could become tedious, clocking in at just under two hours. Instead, Miró intuits the points where he might start losing the audience and draws us back in with a new revelation. It’s dense and literary, with the kinds of layers that would bring new rewards with repeat viewing (and impossible to achieve without astute translation from Sharon Feldman).

Despite the strengths of the writing, this piece doesn’t work without an uncommonly versatile actor. Crowl seems to carry the weight of the play effortlessly on her shoulders. Just as the narrative spirals outwards, Crowl’s performance gets bigger. She starts off confined to a chair, just as the sprawled form of Albert’s deceased body is confined to the muddy ground. Gradually she expands her physicality with each character, until at the end, she steps beyond the tall grass, passing the story to the audience. Her choices, and those by director Mei Ann Teo, drive engagement and highlight Miró’s artistry.

Speaking of the tall grass: the excellent set (Jian Jung) has a striking circle of wheat that evokes both a field and a clearing. An old chair in the center becomes everything from a couch to a bar stool. These few elements, plus a variety of expressive lighting (Kate McGee) memorably create the town’s interiors and exteriors, including a bar, a living room, the remote roundabout where sex workers gather, and the field where Albert’s mutilated body lies.

The Nicest Body Ever Seen Around These Parts is an exploration of intergenerational trauma, and traumas people can inflict on each other through the friction of living their entire lives in proximity. It implies the answers about what happened to Albert lie not in the “whodunnits” of his death, but in the lives of his father and the people in his community. In offering resolution without answers, the piece demands we return to it in our minds. It’s a “fall vibe” we all understand and try to forget, but the best art helps us withstand.