On my YouTube channel, I had done a video about Matteo Esposito’s The Value of Many as a text, but this review is about the 3 Dec. 2023 dramatic reading at The Tank NYC, directed by Meghan Finn. The recording of the reading is available here. My understanding is that The Tank NYC is dedicated to supporting the work of emerging artists, and so it’s great to see Esposito’s play getting a richly deserved performance.

The plot of The Value of Many revolves around a businessman named Dexter who comes into a café and arrogantly harasses Josh, a man on the autism spectrum. Dexter’s friend Larson tries to get Dexter to stop, and in subsequent conversations he tries to persuade Dexter that people with disabilities are valuable and able to contribute to society—an idea Dexter rejects, often in quite grossly ableist terms. However, when Dexter crashes the car because he struggles to see in the rain, Larson is killed and Dexter is confined to a wheelchair. Suddenly facing life with a disability, Dexter re-considers his position and his previous treatment of Josh. When he turns his business over to his associate, Bill, Dexter suggests Bill could hire Josh into the firm. For his part, Josh and his employer at the café, Shirley, see the news of Dexter’s accident in the newspaper and decide they want to give him a card to show their forgiveness and support. When Bill and Dexter offer Josh the job, he’s happy to accept. The play ends with Josh and the others coming to put a flower on Larson’s grave.

Because the Tank NYC production was a staged reading, there was limited performance compared to a full-scale production of the play. However, the actors did an excellent job bringing the story to life through the dialogue and carefully chosen actions to show what would be going on. Nikomeh Anderson (playing Josh) was probably the most active of the actors, which is rather fitting since Josh is one of the main protagonists. Josh is introduced cleaning a table in the café, and Anderson mimed polishing the top of the music stand on which his script rested to show this action; and when Josh stims (ritualized play with something like a string or rubber band, common among people on the autism spectrum), Anderson used the drawstring of his hoodie as Josh’s string. The actors also built the interactions between characters by looking at one another during key elements of dialogue. For instance, when Dexter (played by Chris Erdman) is harassing Josh, he would continually stare at Anderson, while Anderson often looked away. Luke Maloney (playing Larson) would look from Erdman to Anderson and Alyssa Parkhurst (playing Shirley) as he tried to restrain Dexter and apologize to Josh and Shirley for his friend. Even with the comparatively limited activity of a dramatic reading, the actors clearly showed the relationships between the characters and created the action.

One person who doesn’t seem to be credited in the playbill or in the YouTube description is the person who read the stage directions. This is a common role in a dramatic reading because it helps set the scene and helps audiences understand the context. Interestingly, the one area where sound and lighting cues were used in place of read stage directions was with the car crash. When Dexter crashes the car, there was a car wreck sound effect and a flash of light. This is a striking production choice to substitute reading the stage directions aloud here, because this moment is, of course, the turning point in the play and so making that more immediately visceral for the audience is an effective way to show that moment of change.