| . | 02/11/2009
RAISED IN CAPTIVITY
By: Eugene Paul
Jennifer Doyle White
Photo by Nathan Johnson
Playwright Nicky Silver has his name in huge letters on the promo postcard the Red Fern Theater Company has circulated in their marketing of Silver’s Raised in Captivity, his play structured by his bent for bent characters and laced with his lacy laugh lines throughout. That, however, is all you get from Red Fern about Nicky Silver. They don’t even list his bio along with their own in their program. Pish tush. What is all the more remarkable about this egotistic oversight is that their earnest production gives Silver what appears to be his first really serious appearance as more than the promising playwright that Silver has been promising for years. New company and all that, some fantastic acting and some errant direction highlight values beyond the typical Silver that stays silver mostly, never gets to gold, dribbles into bronze late in the show, yet edges into universal unease over and over, enough to keep your attention riveted, funny or gruesome. Or both.
Puppy eyed Sebastian (Josh Lefkowitz) droops under a motor mouth barrage leveled at him by his twin sister Bernadette (Emilie Elizabeth Miller) which is simply not recapitulatable because it’s Silver at his silver tongued swiftest. Zany might be mild as a description. The point: she loves/hates her brother, her husband, her mother. This takes place in a cemetery she also loves/hates the name of at the grave side of their freshly buried mother, killed by a flying shower head as she took her last, alas, uncompleted shower. (You see what I mean?) And, oh, yes, she loves/hates herself. Her twin brother avoids her and everyone else since his lover, Simon, died of AIDS eleven years ago. He has decided to fire his shrink, Hillary (Jennifer Dorr White) and does so in one of the funniest scenes in the play. Jennifer Dorr White (so many three named actors!) is priceless, at her comic best until done in by playwright Silver’s macabre mind as the play develops. Develops? Let us rather say unfolds. Like one of those travel maps you can’t put back together.
Is the play about Sebastian? Perhaps. And his problems relating? Celibate these past eleven years, he has begun a passionate correspondence with an inmate on Death Row, Roger, dazzlingly played by Jose Joaquin Perez, (Oy. Three again) refusing to believe that Roger really, really did commit a particularly gruesome murder. Or any murder. (Yes, we get to hear about it.)
But, then, there’s Kip (excellent Bryant Mason), Bernadette’s dentist husband. Much of the play seems about him. In an epiphany, Kip gives up his dentistry to devote himself full time to painting. He is an artist. He must satisfy his soul and besides, Bernadette now has all her mother’s money since Sebastian gave up his share. Kip gotta live for his art, gotta go to Africa and LIVE.
Bernadette? Pregnant? Is the play about her? She loves/hates the baby. Too. Hillary, then, the shrink. Or ex-shrink, after Sebastian dumped her. Blinded by love. And her own hand.
Is there resolution in all this? Do we care about any of them? All of them? Playwright Silver is very fortunate in that we do care, thanks to an exceptional cast, which has, of all things, certain humanity underneath the mishugass. Resolution? Please. Don’t ask. Director Dominic D’Andrea sneaks up on resolution when he ought to charge full throttle before we come to our senses. Eliza Brown’s scenery is ingenious, though too ugly-raw, in need of gentling. I did like the actors being their own stage crew (we, are, clearly, Off-Off Broadway, albeit about fifty feet up) and wished they did it more openly, working right through Silver’s deft, frequently delicious dialogue. There’s a major additional quirky perk: makes you think, this production. And that’s not bad for Silver. For anyone.
Shell Theater, 300 West 43rd Street. 4th Floor. Tickets: $18. 212-352-3101. Also, TDF. Thu Fri Sat Sun 8 pm. Mat: Sun 3 pm.
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