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Three Seconds in the Key
By Jenny Sandman
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(Top to bottom): Malcom Morano, Samuel R. Gates, Catherine Curtin
(Photo: Carol Rosegg ) |
The play is based on playwright Deb Margolin's real-life struggle with Hodgkin's disease. Hodgkin's is cancer of the lymphatic system, and here we see a middle-aged suburban housewife struggling with her disease, terrified of dying and not being around to raise her 10-year-old son. Even while she's still here she can't do anything much with him either. Weakened as she is from the chemo, the only activity she and the boy can share is watching basketball on TV. The "key" to her is her life--she can't spend a long time there, but she doesn't want to move out of it yet.
Enter Player. One night, as her son rages quietly to himself in his room, a Knicks player steps of the TV and addresses the housewife. After each game, he visits her, and together they talk through her thoughts and fears. Gradually she accepts his presence and begins to listen as he talks about God and death and letting go. By the end of the play (when his visits stop, just as mysteriously as they began), she's more at peace with both her death and her life--and, by extension, so is her son.
It sounds like a very lyrical, moving story. And it could be. But it's not there yet. The script is muddy, with many different voices and with no definite tone. It needs more shape, direction and thematic clarity. Right now it's about mother-son bonding, Hodgkin's disease, basketball, religion, theology, race relations, and a number of other issues that obscure the main story line.
The dialogue is too poetically offbeat; in one monologue, the inside of a dead deer is referred to as being the "searing red of a pomegranate." While such wordplay is inventive, it feels out of place in this piece. There's also no textual support for the concept. A basketball player stepping out of the TV to converse with a housewife falls squarely into the genre of magic realism, but there are no other hints of magic realism in the play or its structure; consequently,. The Player's appearances feel tacked on.
Catherine Curtin (Mother) unfortunately doesn't do the subject matter justice. She's flat, distant, with a strange monotone. She seems disconnected, especially during the long monologues that tend to ramble and for which director Alexandra Aron repeatedly places her in the same spot (down front center). Sme visual stimulation is sorely needed but not provided by this blocking.
The stage has been recreated as a basketball court, with a sofa and coffee table in the middle of the playing area. It's another obvious metaphor, this one for the isolation of disease. A flat screen TV hangs over the hoop. Periodically, five large basketball players recreate actual basketball games, so that the court is functional as well as decorative. It's a large stage, and given the intimacy of the subject matter, it's an overly cavernous theatre (basketball or not).
Like the Knicks themselves, this play can't seem to get it together for any sustained period of time, and just isn't very good.
| THREE SECONDS IN THE KEY Written by Deb Margolin Directed by Alexandra Aron With Catherine Curtin, Malcolm Morano, Samuel R. Gates, Ato Essandoh, Jeffrey Evan Thomas, Avery Glymph and David S. Shaw Lighting Design by Tyler Micoleau Costume Design by Veronica Worts Set Design by Lauren Helpern Sound Design by Elizabeth Rhodes Running time: One hour and thirty minutes with one intermission New Georges at Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue at 25th Street; 212-868-4444 April 12th through May 8th; Mondays through Saturdays at 8 pm. All tickets $19. Reviewed by Jenny Sandman based on April 13th performance |
Retold by Tina Packer of Shakespeare & Co.
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