|
By Carol Davis
 SAN DIEGO--I was telling my thirty something Pilates instructor about my weekend activities and what plays I had seen. When I started to tell her about Things We Want now playing at New Village Arts Theatre in Carlsbad, she said "Stop! I’ve lived it every day of my life, I don’t want to hear about it”. Pretty heavy stuff, I thought. I knew she was a bit scattered and impulsive. Even though she’s a great Pilates instructor and has her stuff together during my time with her, from her tid bits of conversation her life seems always on the verge of something going to happen.
It’s generational, I concluded after listening to her comings and goings and sitting through Jonathan Marc Sherman and the New Village Art’s regional premiere of Things We Want.
The problem is that the four twenty-something characters in Sherman’s play don’t seem to know (kinda like my thirty- something instructor) what they want, contrary to the name of the play. Their lives are, to put it politely, screwed up. Three of the characters, Sty (Adam Brick), Charlie (Tim Parker) and Teddy (Joshua Everett Johnson) are brothers who happen to share the same disease, alcoholism. Stella (Rachael VanWormer) their friend and all-purpose female, is also an alcoholic.
It is billed as a ‘dirty, sexy, suicide comedy’ and this reviewer found little in the piece with which to identify, which may only be a reflection of my being old enough to be any of the four character’s grandmother and whose own adult children are past the age (I pray) of self destruction.
Sherman who is pushing forty by now was somewhat of a boy wonder at the ripe old age of eighteen. He wrote Women and Wallace 1988 about a young man haunted by his mother’s suicide and a dark comedy called Evolution in 1998 that made it to off- Broadway staring Sherman and his long time buddy Josh Hamilton about a student, a college thesis and romance, which according to critics never went anywhere.
Sherman, who happens to be Jewish by birth is also the product of having a mother who committed suicide by inhaling exhaust fumes while sitting in the family car which was parked in their garage. Jonathan was six at the time. He was raised mostly by his father. You might say Sherman is writing from experience or is working through his demons in Things We Want even though he says, “A lot of the details aren’t autobiographical but a lot of the stuff underneath, certainly to me, feels incredibly autobiographical”.
After his first success in 1988 he turned to alcohol and by 1996 was almost given up as hopeless by his friends. It wasn’t until 2001 when he thought he was dying (of a heart attack) and took himself to the hospital that he started on the road to therapy and recovery.
When we first meet up with the brothers in Things We Want, they are in their parents' 10th floor New York apartment (the place they grew up). We learn something about them right off the bat. Sty is buried on the couch under a blue blanket with the TV blaring; Charlie pops in the door complete with back pack and duffle filled with his belongings and Teddy is in the bathroom getting ready to go off to work.
In a short time we know that Sty is an alcoholic with an affinity for both the bottle, checking out cuties at AA meetings and Bonsai plants; Charlie has left his coveted culinary school education after his girlfriend Zelda dumped him causing a ‘heart nervous breakdown; ’ and Teddy seems totally together, but a manipulating kind of a guy who brags about his wonderful job working for a Dr. Miracle who teaches us all about our chakras, or force centers or energy. There are seven of them and throughout the play; Teddy manages to touch on all of them in one way or another while we are hearing snippets of a Dr. Miracle DVD in the background.
Stella is their free-wielding. sexy neighbor and friend of Sty’s who helped and encouraged him to attend AA meetings (she also attended). She hooks up with Charlie after showing up at their apartment for who knows what. The two become an item for a year. Charlie is as happy as a clam but you know that something will tip the scales. It’s in the Sherman stars. In the meantime, Charlie gets himself a job cooking and things seem hunky dory for himself and Stella. They are about to celebrate their one-year anniversary when things, well…
Now we have four very damaged young people ‘in search of wanting something’. Stella, you see, is a former piano prodigy from Juilliard with a bad right hand who obsesses about
Go to the top of next column |
|
playing the piano. She too had to drop out of school because of her own trauma. That she lives in the same apartment building makes it convenient for all the brothers and in the end, adds more excitement, especially in the final scenes with Everett’s Teddy.
Turn about is fair play in Act II, and it’s a year later when the lights come up again. It’s almost a repeat of the opening of the first act with a figure lying sprawled out on the couch. This time it’s not Sty. It wouldn’t be fair to give any more of the story away except to say that throughout the play as the brothers interact with each other, and roles get reversed and recoveries are mad, all is not well on 10th Avenue. There is no denying all three are equally damaged be it by love, alcohol and or abandonment. The things each want are as elusive as well, trying to track a shooting star.
As the dynamic shifts back and fourth among the three brothers, it is painful to imagine what is going through their heads as each grapples with their own hell on earth. Something is missing here, however. There is a disconnect in Sherman’s play in what they feel, say, what they do and how they interact with each other that doesn’t add up.
No matter how hard director Lisa Berger and her talented cast work, and they work hard to make it believable, Sherman’s dialogue, or lack thereof just doesn’t ring true. The energy, the bond, the brother factor between sibling and sibling, as well as between siblings and Stella, is just is not there. In the end, I really couldn’t find much to like or care about any of them except Charlie, perhaps, and he gets screwed in the end.
David Weiner designed the New York apartment house interior as a cluttered living room, small kitchen, and hallway with a bathroom (not seen but used) connecting the kitchen to the hall that I assume leads to the bedrooms. Plants and pictures are scattered about, above the cut away of the apartment are silhouettes of other buildings and smack dab in the middle of the living room is a large window that looks down to the street. By its own prominence, it’s almost another character.
With the window open (which it is throughout most of the play) street noises can be heard, and several coveted items are carelessly tossed out to the dismay of those losing their goods. Too many conversations that allude to jumping are made by each of the siblings. It might be important to note that the boy’s parents both jumped from that very same window, first their father and five years later their mother. Each in his own turn confesses that his misses his parents. While the actors are at the top of their performances, the play itself is somewhat of a downer, black humor and scattered laughter be dammed.
Once again New Village Arts has the best of the best in terms of actors. Joshua Everett Johnson, who will be leaving soon for New York, is always one to watch. Charming and winning in most everything he does on stage he is once again at the top of his craft as Teddy the control freak, the truth spreader of the miracle wonders of the rich and famous Dr. Miracle.
Just as charming and full of mischief Rachael VanWormer is a kick as Stella in her teeny weenie Catholic Girls School skirt (a reminder of her good old days) as she seduces brother after brother. VanWormer has come a long way over the years and has proven herself more than once as a professional to be watched.
Parker, the more romantic of the three does a balancing act well between neurotic and normal (or what Charlie thinks is normal) although his diction on opening night could have been sharper and Adam Brick is a kick as Sty after he sobers up and becomes ‘The Man’ who suddenly awoke from a bad dream and is sprouting AA wisdom to all who will listen when just a year before he could barely string two sentences together.
Kristianne Kurner’s costumes are right on the mark as are the actors. Adam Lansky’s sound design and Bonnie Durben’s props complete the picture. If you are looking for something different you might want to give it a try. To quote Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play of the same name (Act 2 Scene 2) ‘More relative than this- the play’s the thing." but in this case the acting has it all over the play.
Things We Want continues through Oct. 11/
For more information visit newvillagearts.org or call 760/433-3245.
See you at the theatre.
|
|
