Photo by Raphael Jordan
Accelerating flamenco music in the blackout opens with a pop. Lights up on a familiar sight: the obligatory coffee date following a recent hookup. Bruce, played by Dusty Brown, and Sue, played by DeAnna Lenhart, sit nervously at a café table, and navigate their way through Scott Organ’s contemporary, naturalistic dialogue that feels pulled from the script of a new dramatic TV series on NBC. The minimal production in The Little Theatre at The Barrow Group barely feels like theater at all. Still, their careful miscommunication is deliciously awkward as she confesses to her unexpected pregnancy, and we enjoy watching them squirm through semantics, such as when Bruce tells her it’s been a month since he had heard from her, to which she replied, “it wasn’t a month; it was four weeks.”
From the outset, these two characters are pitted against one another, and the actors dutifully follow the course of the script, and try to fill in the subtle nuances in their choppy dialogue with moments of depth, and tension. However, they are ultimately unsuccessful in playing their conflicting objectives. In fact, most of the play is spent trying to figure out their answers to the question, “what do you want?” Neither of them seems to know. The closest Bruce can get is knowing that he wants to be present for her abortion, he feels “compelled,” but cannot explain why.
Instead of going head to head over a strong conflict of interest, the two characters are polarized in nature. Sue is nihilistic, fatalistic, and anxious, while Bruce represents optimism itself. She is difficult to sympathize with as she consistently stomps on Bruce’s idealistic offerings to the point where he asks her outright, “Have I done something to piss you off?” and she retorts, “you impregnated me.” With no design element to speak of, the entire weight of the storytelling rests on the actors’ shoulders, and the lack of dramatic tension between these two characters makes the whole piece sag. Watching these two characters in a tiny black box theater reminds one of “facebook stalking.” It feels voyeuristic, and is not particularly interesting, but still you continue to watch.
Significantly, Organ weaves the idea of time, both past tense, and distant future through the play. Sue reminds Bruce that she “liked him.” Past tense. Bruce playfully tries to convince her that he is actually a man from the future who has come back in time for a sex vacation. She preemptively dooms their relationship for fear of what is to come, and his clinging to the past traps them in a kind of limbo in the present where they cannot connect to each other. Curiously, there was no connection between the idea of offspring, and the future. A stronger choice may have been for Organ to include Bruce’s description and feelings for their child in the future as a tactic to make her keep it. The man from the future would have had more to say about their future offspring, and would have sparked a debate over something concrete, the decision to abort the baby, or not.
Phoenix offers an un-romantic and harsh critique of coupling, and traditional notions of conceiving a child. Organ chips away at romance bit by bit. His two characters are not particularly compatible, which makes it difficult to root for their union. Is this the modern relationship: apologetic, bumbling, and nihilistic? According to Sue, we are just going to die alone, and unhappy, so what’s the point? These people have no need of one another, and their superficial wants come across as empty programmed responses. We get the sense that Sue is only regurgitating conclusions she has formed from watching people in her life suffer from their relationships. Likewise, Bruce is desperate for a replacement wife, and semblance of normalcy in the shape of a family. These two people are obviously intelligent, self-actualized products of their environment. Still, they are unable to connect with one another, and spend more time troubleshooting their communication issues.
The Barrow Group
312 W. 36th Street, 3rd floor
Fri-Mon @ 8 pm, Sun matinee @ 3pm
For tickets call (212) 760-2615