Nomadic Theater’s Theatrical Shorts present six plays written by a variety of playwrights?August Strindberg, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter?and is directed by Professor Baker-White, a professor in the Department of Art, Music and Theater. The actors make an admirable effort, but they frequently demonstrate an inability to subsist on the mere scraps and bare bones with which they are provided. Audiences will probably find that their appetites run in a similar vein.
The first play, Strindberg’s The Stronger, is a quick caf? encounter between two ladies, played by Katie Einspanier (SFS ‘05) and Jen Rogers (CAS ‘06). Einspanier, out doing some shopping, spies Rogers seated at a table and comes over to chat. Making chat soon turns to miming the habits of her husband’s feet, which quickly turns to an exhausting exercise in digging up the past, reheating it, then messily slinging it against the walls before partially regaining her poise and making an exit. Einspanier’s role is demanding, especially because Rogers’ character is too concerned with hiding behind her cascading curls to give her bitter rival any surface to bounce her emotions off of. At times she manages the role admirably; at others, her timing spirals out of control. But the duo do manage to engage, if fitfully, and the play’s open-ended grasping suggests that the show might open wide, then narrow to a finely honed point.
Of course, a quick glance at the names of the playwrights involved should be enough to convince most theatergoers that Theatrical Short will do nothing of the sort. And they would be right. As the lights come up ever so slightly on Beckett’s Ohio Impromptu, we see two men in long black overcoats crouched over a table, leaning stiffly on their arms. Their coats are complemented by their matching manes of very long, evenly brown hair. One of them, Michael Benz (CAS ‘04), proceeds to read from a rambling story, while the other, Ben O’Brien (CAS ‘04) raps his knuckles occasionally on the table, which causes Benz to restart the story several lines back. Unsure, we look on, waiting for them to break out of their own intent stares at the tabletop. They don’t, and the piece eventually draws to a close after a brief spat (the knuckle rapper wants more story; the reader doesn’t). The play’s only real physical movement, in which our gothic Vikings slowly turn to one another after lowering their arms to the table, is an essay in motion that carries no tension save the weight of its own awkwardness.
The third bit, Rockaby, features Amy Bozzo (CAS ‘04) as both an old woman in a rocking chair and as a prerecorded voice reading over the scene who possibly represents the thoughts of the old woman herself.
Or possibly not. The monologist finds a mild pleasure in the repetition of old age, but Bozzo’s rocking is utterly joyless. On the other hand, she does manage the minor feat of rocking for some time without any noticeable effort save the energy generated by her own determined clenching. Unfortunately, this makes it rather hard to connect her with the woman of the speaker’s tale. The story does wind down several times, with the prerecorded voice repeating, “Time … she stopped,” and you will find yourself agreeing emphatically, only to be countered when the play’s action rise again. It does stop, eventually, but not fast enough.
Catastrophe, yet another Beckett play, captures director (O’Brien) and his assistant (Bozzo) as they attempt to capture the perfect way to light and position a corpse (Benz). O’Brien has a wonderfully chirpy accent for doling out orders and snide critiques of his contemporaries. Bozzo’s snappy movements and confident strides are wholly engaging, and Benz is pretty good as a dead body. As our tale ends, the director has lit his cadaver just how he likes it, with a lone spotlight, and Benz’ head raises to reveal a glimmer of hope. Audience, take note: this corpse knows the score.
The meat of the production follows with Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska, in which a doctor (Benz) confronts his patient, Deborah (Rogers), whom he has just woken from a 29-year disease-induced coma. The energies they produce are wild, crisscrossing affairs as each tries to communicate with the other. She is hindered by the residual mania and natural denial of a person who has just awoken from a coma; he is deeply frustrated at finding himself arguing with a rather belligerent live patient instead of checking an old woman’s charts. Benz’ doctor is excellent, all quivering jaw and nervous glances, capturing the collapsed efforts of 29 years’ work in a quick drop of his arm. Rogers shifts gears madly, producing a mania only matched by her three-decade-old bedhead and vividly painting images of a girlhood buried long before. Einspanier joins at the end as Pauline, the patient’s sister, and takes a few exchanges to hit her stride. But she does once she finds herself clutching her twitching, pawing sister in the throes of this fine slow-motion tragedy.
There is something pleasingly organic, human, even, about the burlap sacks which are wheeled onstage at the beginning of the last play. It quickly proves to be their contents, as they are prodded to life by a long wheeled spear. The persons found inside (Bozzo and O’Brien) then proceed to rhythmically take turns donning pants, suspenders, an oversized bow tie, a coat and a bowler before stripping and slumping back into their sacks. Yes, we’re back in Beckett, with Act Without Words II. Once again, the actors have little to go on. Beyond Bozzo’s remarkable ability to swallow an unidentified prescription pill without the aid of a glass of water, there is nothing impressive at all about her cartoonish, overblown movements. O’Brien’s mimicking of a mechanized morning routine consists of frequent head-nods and little else. But the absurd push-ups are a nice touch. His day complete, he drags his sleeping partner in monotony a few feet across the stage, strips, moves his own burlap sack to the other side and climbs in. As they leapfrog across the stage, further and further from the wings, you will ask yourself: Is that wheeled spear long enough to reach all the way over there? Can its operator aim? The answer is yes, but most of the rest of this show misses entirely.
