The two originally met in their 20s/30s on a boat cruise. He was a reformed anarchist, turned medical student, and she was a brassy comedienne. Lately though, the fire seemed to have gone out of both their marriage and their personality. Peter also resented Cathy for including all the details of their lives in her act while she faulted him for shutting down emotionally. Once your partner's faults become irritation, everything is fair game: their relationship to their parents, your parents, your daughter (Nina Taylor as Vanessa), even mutual friends.
The situation was even more fraught with a developing affair between Peter and a 19-year-old patient named April (Bahia Watson). He was oddly drawn to her tough-girl demeanour and habit of cutting herself. There were intimations that this fascination might hearken back to his own youthful past.
The 3 main characters were compelling played, with emotional performances, and painful conversations. The culmination of this intensity was Cathy, going into her stand-up spiel, who became increasingly honest, frantic, and eventually unhinged as she unloaded all their burden onto her audience. In the background, David raced from door to door, looking for a ringing telephone.
A follow-up encounter with David (Damien Atkins), a shameful spectre from Peter's past was an unnecessary complication. The scene poured more emotional oil onto an already boiling plot. It paradoxically deflated the play: theatrical fatigue at work. A coda also killed some of the fire, by adding distance between us and Peter and Cathy. It would have been better to leave them where they were, with nothing resolved yet except their new-found honesty.
The set was an enormous white box, with 4 doors in the back, flanked by boxes and a recliner on one end (the Kirk's home), and functional office chairs at the other end (Peter's office). The stark stage, lit up by unforgiving white light, left no room for the characters to hide.
No comments:
Post a Comment