Louder, Please!

First off I'd like to mention that thirty seconds into the play, during the protagonist's opening monologue someone in the back row bellowed, "I can’t hear you" to the audience's and the actor's great surprise. I'd like to commend the actor for recovering gracefully from the comments of the "back-seat driver," though the volume did need to be raised; but more of that later.

First the set, which suggested a complex connection between past and present. At the center of the set for much of the play sat a hospital bed occupied by Therese Marie (Ellen Burstyn) and screens all around which were moved throughout the play. The screens served the dual purpose of giving shape to the set as well as allowing the characters to have interact with their most core-shaking memories. Therese's father, for example, often weaved in and out of the screens. The past was always alive on the stage, and yet it was often only revealed partially, always covered by shadows. This worked for me since all the characters have this burning desire to rediscover the past and at the same time to bury it, to distort it beyond recognition. Therese wants to remember her father, but she only wants to remember all of his good qualities but none of his less "graceful" ones and so she only sees what she wants to see; she keeps him at bay behind the screen. Danny is a drug addict and a "recovering" alcoholic. Clearly he too needs to put a wall between him and his own demons. Danny's sister too has thrust herself into the roll of her mother's caregiver so she doesn't have to face childhood fears of losing her.

This play is solid. It boasts impressive acting and the powerful, poetic words of playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. The characters appeared passionate, involved, and the message was clear: everyone has got a couple of ghosts hot on their trail; everyone has a past that's a part of them. This play should have been inspiring but, for me, it wasn’t because when I got home it didn't make me think and it didn't give me a hunger to discover. I pulled the covers over my head and Danny and Therese, the hospital and the curtains vanished from my mind until now. For me they're already dead and being excavated and I just saw the show a week ago. The play just lacked life, and as I watched it I wanted to pump some blood into it. After the opening monologue nobody had trouble raising the volume of their voices, but in terms of raising different perspectives, they needed to turn to volume way up. It was noticeable that Danny's extremely loud voice and apparently central role in the play overshadowed everyone else. I would have been interested to hear more from his girlfriend, "jailbait," who is cut out of the play abruptly with one line, something like "she’s on a train back home." I think it would have been more effective too to have given the sister a bigger voice, or the nurses who are presented as little more than guardian angels. These people have lives and pasts beyond Danny and Therese and I found myself wanting to know more about them. Maybe this would have given the play a heartbeat.