Photo credit: Mike Peter
Once again blood proves
to be thicker than water and certainly true in the wake of the hurricane that will
batter the lives of the four harried characters in Tammy Ryan’s dramatic comedy,
the winner among 659 submissions to the Premiere Play Festival, For all the
wind that is whipped up on the stage from both humans and from nature, “The
Wake” regrettably also puts into question the quality of the other 658 submissions.
Despite drowning in more themes and dramatic genres that it can reasonably
handle, it nevertheless holds a strange fascination for the observer. That Ryan’s
play also exists uneasily in a space that exists somewhere between the eerily metaphysical
and the plane of magical realism doesn’t help us connect to it. This does not
to imply that the four actors thrown into the wake, under the direction of the
theatre’s producing artistic director John, J. Wooten, have not faced their
fate with gusto.
As a fan of Ryan’s previous
plays “Lost Boy Found in Whole Foods,” and “Soldier’s Heart,” both of which were
produced at Premiere Stages, my disappointment largely springs from
anticipation. This play is set in a beach house rental in Florida, a short driving
distance from Universal in Orlando. It is here is where two estranged sisters
Maggie (Kelley Rae O’Donnell) and Rosemary (Kathy McCafferty) have decided to
meet in a semblance of peace and forgiveness to scatter the ashes of their
sister Coleen.
It becomes apparent
quickly that Maggie and Rosemary are embracing a truce and have little in common
with each other or for that matter with the men in their lives. They have arrived
with plenty of emotional baggage and a minimum of hope and expectancy at the beach
where they spent time as children. Maggie is particularly careful with the urn
of ashes, the contents of which by consent are to be dispersed into the ocean. Maggie’s
slovenly and blustery boy friend Doyle (James Gushue) and Rosemary’s openly
condescending husband Ed (Wayne Margins) display just the kind of reticent commitment
to the event we might expect.
For most of the play, Maggie
and Rosemary are given to raising their shrill voices to renew the mainly strident
bickering that has defined them as discontents over a lifetime. They only have
in common what one did and one didn’t do for their foot-loose/alcoholic sister
who died from cancer. Ed and Doyle are seen mostly at loggerheads baiting each
other with their opposing ideologies. Ed is revealed as a corrupt accountant
for a company that makes its money by fracking. He makes no bones about how he
feels about nature-loving Doyle’s conservationist posturing.
Far from battening down
the hatches until it is too late, there is virtually no serious consideration given
to dealing with the impending hurricane-- except opening bottles of wine and ignoring
the posted evacuation that has incredulously gone unnoticed on the front door.
Once these four finally
pay heed to the alerts, they discover that the hurricane is named Colleen. ooooh.
Of course, we are meant to surmise a mystical cause for this as it presumably serves
to re-unite the sparring sisters. This becomes more apparent with a flurry of attacks
on the house by a blue heron and the appearance of other sea creatures. More
realistically, one might ponder upon the sheer reckless parenting of Rosemary and
Ed who have no qualms about having left their two teenage children to fend for
themselves without supervision or a day at Universal with a hurricane brewing.
This, while they fulfill what they perceive as their obligation to Rosemary who
has been Colleen’s care-giver in final last days.
Maggie is fueled by a repressed
guilt that is bound to surface before the play ends; Maggie is filled with a
festering rage that is directed mostly at Ed and resigned to ignore his sexual philandering.
Doyle, who, in his garb and tooth-challenged smile, could be mistaken for a shipwrecked
pirate, seems perfectly at home preparing for the worst and explaining to all the
unexplainable.
Although these
characters are over-loaded with back-stories, neurotic personalities and socio-political
agendas, they neither, through dialogue nor deeds, inspire our empathy. Neither
do they conspire to create a credible dramatic conflict to warrant our concern.
Despite the very effective set designed
by Bethanie Warnpol Watson, “The Wake” realistically only puts to rest a play about
four hapless people of interest only to that one ill-fated blue heron. It is
definitely worth experiencing by anyone interested in the development of
dramatic literature. It could wash up again on regional stages but only after a
lot more work by this definitely up and coming playwright and a tough dramaturg.
“The Wake” is For
tickets and performance information call 908 - 737 - 7469 or http://www.premierestagesatkean.com/.
No comments:
Post a Comment