Susan Louise O'Connor (L) and Amy Staats (R)
Photo credit: Mike Peters
Janice (Amy Staats) is a single, thirty-two year old visual artist who has just lost her job and may not be able to continue paying the rent on her apartment. But that's not the real reason she feels she is not only underwater but also under siege. Tormented by the fear she may have inherited the genes that bring on mental illness, she finds herself recklessly testing the boundaries of rational behavior.
Tom Matthew Wolfe has written an absorbing play that poses many complex predicaments for its unstrung heroine. It also provides some provocative insights into the way we cope with mental illness.
Janice is almost used to her recurring visions and the protracted visitations by her paranoid schizophrenic mother Theresa (Susan Louise O'Conner) whom she hasn't seen in twenty years. She is also contending with her feelings of guilt for not being attentive enough to her sixty-year-old Alzheimer-afflicted father Michael (Daren Kelly), a retired policeman. Her sense of guilt also extends to not sharing part of the burden of taking care of her father with her brother Jimmy (Ryan Barry), a police officer who has remained living the lonely life in the family home that had (we are told) been set afire by Theresa who no longer lives there.
But what is it that is driving Janice to unrealistically pursue a relationship with Paul (Eddie Boroevich), the superintendent of her building, an Iraq War veteran whom we can see is suffering from severe depression and symptoms related to PTSD? The answer to that last question is at the heart of Wolfe's issue-focused but essentially character-driven play in which we see how the often irrational, anxiety-driven Janice decide to take the genetic test that will confirm or deny her being a candidate for mental illness. To read the complete review posted on 09/06/14 please go to http://curtainup.com/janiceunderwaternj14.html
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