| . | 02/10/2009
The Castle
By: Deirdre Donovan
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| (l.-r.) Angel Ramos, Vilma Ortiz Donavan, Kenneth Harrigan and Casimero Torres in The Castle.
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| photo by Filip Kwiatkowski | |
A remarkable dramatic work continues its run at New World Stages. The Castle is a “drama verite” that invites us to listen to the real-life stories of 4 ex-convicts who have served considerable time (a total of 70 years if you add their individual prison sentences together) in New York State prisons. In this 70-minute piece we learn how they ended up behind bars, the personal circumstances that contributed to their arrests and convictions, their long incarcerations, and their eventual return to society. If this sounds like a grim and forbidding show, it’s not. In fact, this theatrical event is extremely inspiring, poignantly moving, and brimming with hope.
The title of the work is essentially its subject. “The Castle” is the name of the Fortune Society residence facility at Riverside Drive and 140th Street that gave the 4 performers their Second Chance after being released from prison. A kind of sanctuary for ex-convicts, it enabled them, like the proverbial Phoenix, to rise from the ashes of their past, and rebuild a new life.
The 4 performers—Rory Anderson, Vilma Ortiz Donovan, Angel Ramos, Casimiro Torres—emerge as distinct and resilient personalities, and pull the audience in from the getgo. The piece begins with the 4 performers quietly walking onto an almost empty stage and sitting down on chairs behind music stands. No notes or scripts are used by this extremely poised cast. In fact, the only other image we see onstage is a huge photo of “The Castle,” which aptly serves as the work’s backdrop. After a few beats of total silence, Torres’s voice pierces through the stillness, introducing himself as an ex-convict. The rest of the cast fluidly joins in with similarly transparent introductions. Honesty is the operative word in The Castle, and this quality intensifies with each plain-spoken sentence.
This is a real piece of theater, with a strong arc of narrative. We have a chance to learn the particularities of each speakers’s background and personal journey through drugs and crime. All the monologues are seamlessly delivered and artfully orchestrated. The good chemistry of the ensemble is palpable, each performer attentive to the other’s monologue, sometimes even chuckling over his (or her) humorous anecdote. This drama, in fact, is a tightly interwoven tapestry of 4 ex-convicts’ personal and social narratives. And it slowly congeals into a powerful human statement, and satisfying whole.
The ex-inmates feelings of ostracism and isolation emerge time and time again in their monologues. Oddly, they reveal that attempting to re-integrate into society at-large was when their stress and anxiety would be at its worst. For all of its negative atmosphere, the cast uniformly agreed that prison formed a kind of cocoon around them, shielding them from the Outside. Once released, however, the psychological baggage of being an ex-con was often overwhelming, and even self-defeating. One of the darker aspects to their individual stories is that each cast member, after being released from prison, was later incarcerated for a new crime.
Without joining the dots in big, bold lines, The Castle makes it clear how the past is the parent of the present, how these 4 rehabilitated persons now work with ex-convicts or youths “at risk.” In short, their very effectiveness in the community today hinges on their capacity to pull others up out of the mire of drugs and crime. If their present-day realities have a shimmer of sadness associated with their own incarceration, it seems to be the price they pay for being good-living citizens and taxpayers.
The “talk back” with the cast follows each show and gives the audience ample opportunity to ask any questions that might have crossed their mind during the performance. Not surprisingly, this became a real forum about many current issues surrounding the criminal justice system. The ex-inmates were not only able to intelligently respond to the various audience members, but added their personal insights to the ad hoc situations.
The Castle has amassed an impressive 10-month run at New World Stages. It has played before the New York State Legislature as well as at Riker’s Island Prison, Fresh Kills Prison, Greenhaven Prison, the Tombs, Queens Correctional facility, and more. No fluff or special theatrical effects here, but the cast’s real-life stories will burn into your memory.
Conceived and directed by David Rothenberg, this well-rehearsed piece runs like clockwork, and has the sharp edge of deeply-felt experience. The Castle is one of those experiences that remind a critic that real-life sometimes supplies the best drama.
New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street.
http://www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200.
Performances are on Saturday afternoons at 5pm.
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