The four scientists in “Instinct” spend most of the play’s 85-minute running time debating parenthood, religion and sexual identity.
Oh, and they’re also trying to halt an epidemic killing hundreds, potentially thousands, of people.
That stopping the spread of SARS seems a mere afterthought is the main problem in Matthew Maguire’s strangely skewed play, which ran off-off-Broadway last spring under the more evocative title “Wax Wings,” a reference to Icarus flying too close to the sun.
The scientists in question are two couples: epidemiologists Daniel (Jeffrey Withers) and Mara (Kim Blair), whose marriage is teetering because of his refusal to have a child, and vaccinologists Lydia (Maggie Bofill) and Fermina (Amirah Vann), who are also on fragile ground because of Fermina’s now-ended affair with a male lover and Lydia’s addiction to painkillers.
Periodically, the foursome discusses more pressing concerns — the epidemic! — in the hoariest of dialogue. “If we could just make this breakthrough with SARS,” Mara muses, “then public opinion will swing to us like a stampede of wildebeests!”
As a scientific thriller, it pales in comparison to the recent film “Contagion,” while the domestic issues don’t rise above the level of soap opera.
The actors struggle with their one-dimensional roles, although Bofill provides a welcome intensity as the pill-popping Lydia.
But you know a play doesn’t work when the audience has no idea that it’s ended — sitting in silence until wan clapping begins, as if viewers are still waiting for something meaningful to happen.