EST Marathon of 1-act plays -- Series B (2 out of 3)

Back to EST for Series B, the second set of One Acts in the Marathon.  The clever and creative production staff at EST has created a mix-and-match playing area, with pillars offering their services as posts or door jambs or windows, transforming the space into different places for different plays.  Kudos to the scenic design by Nick Francone. 

Series B played like this:

Daddy Took My Debt Away (by Bekah Brunstetter, directed by Jamie Richards) is a comment on our times, but it’s really just a sketch.  Potentially interesting characters are painted in broad strokes, all well acted by Emma Galvin, David Gelles, and Jonathan Randell Silver.  This begins the feeling that some of these one-acts are meant to be parts of a larger whole.

In The Favor, Leslie Ayvazian’s heartfelt story of Ralph and Ellen at a crisis point, we’ll never know if anyone changes or if the main question is resolved.  It’s a sweet and warm slice of a story, the characters are expertly drawn by writer/director Ayvazian and passionately and thoughtfully acted by Grant Shaud and Janet Zarish.  It’s a charming teaser to a potentially larger whole.

The very funny Grant Shaud and Janet Zarish in The Favor.  Photo courtesy Ensemble Studio Theatre.

Something Like Loneliness is a clever play with an interesting conceit:  We’ve all thought, “if only I could bottle that feeling….” Ryan Dowler wrote a world in which emotional moments can be preserved in Tupperware (or Ziploc) containers. Well directed by Colette Robert, apartment dwellers Dan (Chris Wight) knocks on Mia’s (Jane Pfitsch) door.  He lives upstairs and there’s nothing between her ceiling and his floor.  He hears her, and she him: “I don’t have to turn on NPR in the morning,” she says, “I can just listen to yours.”  These two characters capture moments (the sound of a woman pulling on her jeans in the morning, or of an orgasm) and then use the simple conceit of bartering with their containers to engage and maybe take a chance.  It’s fun yet somehow it seemed a bit cerebral.

Waking Up, by Cori Thomas and directed by Tea Alagić, is an impressive counterpoint between two women separated by continents and oceans, yet not separate at all.  The American woman (Amy Staats) finds a lump in her breast, as does the African woman (Lynnette R. Freeman).  The disparities in their societies and experiences make the women seem different as night and day, and yet, and yet….  they are the same.  Each survives breast cancer, and each ends up with hope because she’s alive.  The performances of Ms. Staats and Ms. Freeman are lovely and powerful.  But….it’s more a vignette than a play.

The second half of the evening gave us a gift by Sharr White.  In A Sunrise in Times Square (a phrase that now brings me a horrifying image because of the power of this play), Madeline and Marky take enormous emotional steps forward.  Claudia Weill directs this intense script in which the set is covered with bric-a-brac that disguises the fear and loneliness of damaged Madeline, played tautly by Julie Fitzpatrick.  Her gentlemen caller is Marky, played with simplicity and truth and heart by Joseph Lyle Taylor.  He is a retired fire fighter who instructs office building workers in the proper safety measures in the event of a fire.  He’s just doing a little favor for nervous Madeline, checking her apartment for safety.  But there’s more.  The plays is funny and heartbreaking, the characters meticulous and raw.  For Madeline and Marky, heart and soul and body and mind take chances, leap forward, and live.  These two characters are fully realized by the writer and the marvelous actors, who take on Marky and Madeline’s risks full throttle.  This was the high point of the evening.

The program closes on an odd note:  Love Song of An Albanian Sous Chef is witty and sexy; the title in particular is clever in that the Chef is truly sous la table.  Finally, though, this is a rather long, if deep and dark, sketch on the subject of seduction by food.  Sex, foreplay, promises, betrayal, and violence in about 15 minutes. Written by Robert Askins and directed by Moritz Von Stuelpnagel, it has sparkling performances by Danielle Slavick, Brian Luna, and Andy Nogasky, supported by quirky puppetry by Mike Smith Rivera as the Food.  Funny as it was, it won’t stay the course.

Through this interesting evening, I wondered what made a play work for me.  On this evening, it seemed "change" played a big part in my assessment, and the lack of change lowered a piece's "rating."  In the first two plays, nobody changed. In the third, two people took steps toward potential change.  In the 4th play, the characters had already undergone change and told us about it.  In the last play, nobody actually changed.  In A Sunrise in Times Square, however, Madeline changed from a frightened reclusive victim of her past to a vibrant, courageous woman looking for a future.  That was truly exciting.

Criteria incorporated or aside, Sharr White's play was the most involving and invigorating to me, and leaves me looking forward to Series C in a couple weeks.

~ Molly Matera,  signing off to enjoy the beautiful day before the storms hit.

Where is the Other Place?

KING:     Where is Polonius?

HAMLET : In heaven; send thither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself.

      - Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act IV, Scene 3

Before I arrived at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of The Other Place, I wondered if the title referred to Hamlet’s “other place,” or something else entirely.  Now I think it’s at least both, and maybe many more places. 

Thursday night I saw great theatre.  That must be clear.  Such evenings, such performances are rare indeed.

Laurie Metcalf as Juliana Smithton sits in a chair lit by a square spot on the spartan stage as we enter.  The audience slowly, noisily gets settled.  Strange sounds, like a PA system in an airport, but far, far off, begin to overcome the chattering.  The house lights go down.  Metcalf stirs.

Initially, not knowing what’s going on, Juliana is not particularly likeable.  She’s giving a lecture, she’s giving us snarky asides, she is brash, a bit cruel, insulting, full of herself, and always right.  But we believe what she says, for … why wouldn’t we.  Soon we come to realize she may not be a reliable narrator of her own story.  Still, we’re halfway through the play before we realize that not all the characters we’re meeting are as they seem. 

Zoe Perry and Laurie Metcalf in "The Other Place."  Photo by Joan Marcus. (c) 2012 The Manhattan Theatre Club

This is a magnificent production of Sharr White’s intense play with precise direction by Joe Mantello.  The timing of this piece is clearly defined and spontaneous at once.  From the imaginative and oddly beautiful set (Eugene Lee and Edward Pierce) to the thrillingly emotive lighting design (Justin Townsend), the right costumes (David Zinn) for each of the eight characters played by a company of four at different times in different places, all the way to the video and projection design (William Cusick) that take us from inside the character’s mind to different places in her life.  While speaking of production values, music and sound design by Fitz Patton joined with all the other elements to make this a perfect evening in the theatre.  But this play does not rely on technological brilliance alone. 

The physical behavior of the four actors determine the time of day, the year, the place, and the emotional state of these people — howling in pain, clenched in despair, or just confused — all augmented by the single set with multiple personalities.  We are enthralled. 

Bill Pullman as Ian Smithton.  Photo by Joan Marcus, (c) 2012 Manhattan Theatre Club.

Bill Pullman as Juliana’s long-suffering husband Ian breaks our hearts, as Juliana breaks his.  It is Ian's behavior that tells us who Juliana was, is, leading us gently into the reality of her life.  Ms. Metcalf’s real life daughter Zoe Perry plays three different characters with nothing in common, and without a second of stage time in which one character might be mistaken for another.  John Schiappa also plays a few roles, precisely demarking each one from the others.

And some of the roles these last two play are not entirely … well, real.  Sharr White has created multiple worlds, each one totally believable, but only one true.  These universes and lives are interwoven so expertly, so tightly, that each moment Laurie Metcalf creates is as immediate and real as the last. 

Ms. Metcalf gives us the glamorous to vicious, pathetic to raging woman that is Juliana at different times and places.  She slips sharply into the past, back to the present, into unreality, and we always know that something has changed just by virtue of Ms. Metcalf’s body and face and voice. As we watch this woman and her brilliant mind deteriorate, we forgive her fury.  We forgive her trespasses.  We pray it doesn't happen to us.  We grieve with Juliana as she comes to understand who and where and what she is.

Such performances are rare, as are complementary elements of stagecraft clarifying the questions, the answers, and more questions, with a dash of hope, into a fine piece of theatre.  The Other Place is only playing to March 3rd.  Do not let this play pass you by.  (Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)

~ Molly Matera, with images visual and aural as well as lines running through her head six days later.