EST Marathon 2006 Series B, a CurtainUp review

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A CurtainUp Review

EST Marathon 2006 Series B

Ensemble Studio Theatre's 28th Festival of One-Act Plays
"100 Most Beautiful Names of Todd," "Bone China," "Intermission" and "On the Sporadic"

by Les Gutman

We normally think of grief in terms of the anguish one experiences on the death of a loved one, but psychologists recognize it in a far broader context: the heartbreak of any loss prompts similar concerns and mechanisms. It's not the custom of EST's Marathon to group plays around a central theme, and perhaps it's a random occurrence, but all four plays in the second series of this year's Marathon deal, in one way or another, with the ways we confront and deal with grief. It's good, in any event, to have something to hold onto, because the plays themselves are among the Marathon's least satisfying.

A. Bartlett and D. Ruppe
(Photo: Carol Rosegg)

In Julia Cho's "The 100 Most Beautiful Names of Todd," we see the "conventional" grieving of a mother, Louise (Alison Bartlett), and her eleven year old daughter, Laura (Diana Ruppe), after the death of their husband/father, Todd. Louise is making a list; Laura is attempting to become an adult. With some surprisingly astute guidance from Laura's young foreign-student friend John (William Jackson Harper), Louise and Laura start to find Todd by finding each other a little bit more. Cho and director Jamie Richards nicely interlace scenes that freshly and humorously flesh out the characters, and both Bartlett and Ruppe convey the pained searching of Louise and Laura well. Casting adult actors as the eleven year old Laura and John is problematic if unavoidable, though Harper is more effective in conveying the physical and vocal aspects of a pre-teen.

V. Slezak and M. J. Kurtz
(Photo: Carol Rosegg)

David Mamet's "Bone China" is a very short, quite oblique playlet -- too small a slice to even call a one act by Marathon standards. A middle aged man (Victor Slezak) sits in the office of a woman (Marcia Jean Kurtz) we take to be his therapist. (They are identified only as A and B.) Arriving mid-stream of consciousness as he rails (variously and disjointedly) against psychoanalysis and the Nazis, and in favor of doing what's "moral," we come to realize his issue (of the moment at least) is a daughter who is anorexic. (For her part, B can barely get a word in edgewise, until the phone rings and she carries on one side of an equally oblique and inexplicably included phone conversation with someone we take to be a patient who may or may not have taken some overdose of pills.) Clearly, what we see in A is an exhibition of grief at the "loss" of his daughter to a debilitating eating disorder, with the attendant frustration and anger, not to mention sense of responsibility. What's not clear is what we are to make of it. Mr. Slezak's performance, which is excellent, can't be faulted, nor can Ms. Kurtz's more limited one nor Curt Dempster's direction. But whatever they are doing does not this a play make.

J. Houdyshell and B. Murray
(Photo: Carol Rosegg)

The first half of the evening concludes with Will Eno's "Intermission". While not the most fully formed piece of the evening, and though it might benefit from a little less dawdling, it has its own particular charms. Chief among the play's threshold appeals is the "marriage" of one of almost everyone's favorite actors, Brian Murray, and one of this past Broadway season's favorites, Jane Houdyshell (from the closed-far-too-quickly Well). They are Mr. and Mrs. Smith, who find themselves seated at the theater next to a younger couple, Jack (JJ Kandel) and Jill (Autumn Dornfeld). The play they are watching reaches its intermission with a family at its patriarch's hospital bedside, as the doctor pulls the plug on him. As often happens, the seatmates spend the intermission talking to each other. Mr. Eno has fun observing the silly sorts of things we audience members routinely say at this stage in the proceedings, but it quickly becomes obvious he has deeper intentions: crying -- that essential ingredient of grieving, denial and the difficult task of finding and accepting reality, in ourselves and in others. All of the cast members acquit themselves well, but this is Mr. Murray's play, and he performs it with relish.

Ean Sheehy, Jordan Gelber and Greta
Muller

E. Sheehy, J. Gelber and G. Muller
(Photo: Carol Rosegg)

It takes about thirty seconds of the almost unbearable "On the Sporadic" to realize that leaving at the intermission would not have been a bad idea. James Ryan's overly long play -- it's far too involved to fit into the genre of short one-acts -- does succeed in lacing in another aspect of grief -- of the self-directed variety -- but it fails in almost every other respect. Matthew (Ean Sheehy) comes to a remote casino near the Canadian border to get a fake Canadian passport from Bill Brightrobe (Jordan Gelber) so he can head to England in pursuit of an ex-girlfriend and, putatively, a new life. Bill, a walking timebomb, is smoking, drinking and eating his diabetic body out of his current life. Matthew gets his passport and, for reasons that don't really matter and don't make much sense anyway, the two bond and a canoe trip to Canada ensues. (The drunken Bill proves to be a poor choice of ballast.) Once in Canada, there's a road trip toward the airport with Bill's wife, Daisy (Greta Muller), driving. There is very little point in discussing what they talk about, or why she is in Canada. Sheehy is quite successful at buffeting through the play with a barely-controlled angst. Muller hits the right notes as Daisy, and I suppose Gelber is doing good work as well, though his character is so offensive that it's pretty damn hard to tell. Charles Richter's direction seems to make matters worse rather than better, particularly in the use of overly specific set pieces that unnecessarily cause the audience extra minutes of... grief.

LINKS TO PRIOR MARATHON REVIEWS
97 Series C
98 Series A B C
99 Series A B
00 Series A B C
01 Series A B C
02 Series A B C
03 Series A B
05 Series A
06 Series A

100 Most Beautiful Names of Todd
by Julia Cho
Directed by Jamie Richards
with Allison Bartlett, William Jackson Harper and Diana Ruppe

Bone China
by David Mamet
Directed by Curt Dempster
with Victor Slezak and Marcia Jean Kurtz

Intermission
by Will Eno
Directed by Michael Sexton
with Autumn Dornfeld, Jane Houdyshell, JJ Kandel and Brian Murray

On the Sporadic
by James Ryan
Directed by Charles Richter
with Jordan Gelber, Greta Muller and Ean Sheehy

Set and Lighting Design: Maruti Evans
Costume Consultant: Amela Baksic
Sound Design: Brian Petway
Sound Consultant: Graham Johnson
Running Time: 1 hour, 50 minutes including one intermission
Ensemble Studio Theatre, 549 West 52nd Street, 2d Flr. (10/11 Avs.)
Telephone (212) 352-3101
May 30th - June 19th, 2006
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE: Tuesday May 30th 8pm, Wednesday May 31st 8pm, Thursday June 1st 8pm, Saturday June 3rd 3pm, Saturday June 3rd 8pm, Wednesday June 7th 8pm, Friday June 9th 8pm, Saturday June 10th 3pm, Friday June 16th 8pm, Saturday June 17th 3pm, Sunday June 18th 7pm and Monday June 19th 8pm; $15
Reviewed by Les Gutman based on 5/31/06 performance

Schedule of Final 2006 Marathon Series

SERIES C: June 13th - 25th
"The Night That Roger Went To Visit The Parents Of His Old High School Girlfriend" by Ann Marie Healy, directed by Andrew McCarthy
"The Bus to Buenos Aires (A Musical)" by Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore, directed by Carlos Armesto
"Detail" by Michael Louis Wells
"Lila on the Wall" by Edward Allen Baker, directed by Kevin Confoy
"The Sissy Letters: Numbers 14, 29, and 47" by Stephen Adly Guirgis, Directed by Adam Rapp
Performs Tuesday June 13th 8pm, Wednesday June 14th 8pm, Thursday June 15th 8pm, Saturday June 17th 8pm, Sunday June 18th 2pm, Tuesday June 20th 8pm, Wednesday June 21st 8pm, Thursday June 22nd 8pm, Friday June 23rd 8pm, Saturday June 24th 3pm, Saturday June 24th 8pm and Sunday June 25th 7pm

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