Let Me Down Easy (4/28/2009)

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:52:00 +0000

Austin, Texas

If you're squeamish, like I am, on the topics of death, dying, and illness, you shouldn't let that stop you from experiencing Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy. However, you might not want to see it during a global health scare. On April 28, one of the first days of the swine flu panic, Smith's documentary production, in which she single-handedly portrays a slew of people who face death in some way, resonated a bit too robustly.

Austin's Zach Theatre is the show's last regional stop before Broadway, and, according dramaturg Gideon Lester, Smith has reshaped and refocused her masses of material—monologues gleaned from interviews she conducted with hundreds of people—since the play's 2008 opening in New Haven. In Austin, Smith began with energy and humor, portraying choreographer Elizabeth Streb as she re-enacted a flubbed dance effect in which she accidentally set herself on fire.

Next, Smith became cyclist Lance Armstrong, slouching on a sofa and discussing his bought with cancer and his competitive streak, as well as his lack of familiarity with her genre: "I gotta tell ya, I never seen a play, for starters." This kind of hilarious, self-conscious meta-commentary came up again in a couple of interludes in which Smith portrayed New Yorker theatre critic John Lahr grappling with the concept for the play.

After a series of characters whose claim to the "death" theme is that they willingly put themselves in danger of it—rodeo bull rider, boxer—Smith turned to the topics of illness, being a patient, and health care. It was at this point that Smith seemed to disappear, her physical presence taking a backseat to the language and manner of the material. A sixteen year-old girl with leukemia discussed her illness alongside her mother, who groped her memory in an attempt to pinpoint exactly when something went wrong. A monologue in the character of Philip Pizzo, the dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, got a forceful round of applause after he identified the U.S. health care system as "broken" and in desperate need of a change from market-driven to government run.

The voice with the greatest clarity, for me, was Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, a physician at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, a public hospital where nurses and doctors cared for patients without electricity, relief, or adequate food for nearly a week post-Katrina, even after private hospitals had been evacuated. As Kurtz-Burke, Smith explained the realization, from the perspective of a "privileged" person, that the patients knew long before she did that their government would not make rescuing them a priority. "That was the first time in my life I've ever been abandoned by my government," she said. But for the low-income patients, those who have been given "the shit end of the stick" their whole lives, the neglect wasn't a surprise. Wham.

Smith ended the play with treatments of death itself. As a Brahmin-accented reverend, she discussed the important of closure for the living: "I insist that you see the box go down into the ground." As Trudy Howell, an orphanage director in Johannesburg, she explained the heart-wrenchingly practical process of helping children with AIDS accept their own deaths. To end the play, Smith became a Tibetan monk with a swift image: the just-dead as a cup of tea turned upside down. The liquid poured out. Silence ensued. The lights went out. Fin.

Written by: Jonelle Seitz, May 21st 2009

The Clean House 7/10 - 8/17/2008

admin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:13:00 +0000

Zach Theatre

Austin, Texas

Sarah Ruhl's play The Clean House opens with Mathilde, a Brazilian housekeeper, telling a long and very funny joke - in Portuguese. I don't understand Portuguese, and I doubt very few of my fellow audience members in Austin, TX did, either. Luckily, Mathilde's self-induced laughter, gestures, and a summary translation projected for the audience onto a screen make it easy to get the gist. The joke is dirty, and it's hilarious.

Mathilde goes on to tell the story of her parents: They were in love, and they made each other laugh. Her mother died laughing at a joke her father told, and then her father killed himself. After their deaths, Mathilde came to the United States to become a comedian. She is always trying to come up with the perfect joke, which she describes as "somewhere between an angel and a fart."

Mathilde, played by Smaranda Ciceu in this production, cleans house for Lane (Lauren Lane), a doctor who prescribes Mathilde antidepressants when she neglects the dusting and silver. Lane's sister, Virginia (Barbara Chisholm), is of the obsessive neat-freak type – à la Monica on Friends – and offers to help Mathilde out by cleaning Lane's house herself.

When Lane's husband, Charles (Tom Green), also a doctor, leaves her for an older cancer patient, Virginia and Mathilde are caught, and the plot turns to focus on the relationships that ensue. Charles, stupefied and awed by finding his soul mate Ana (Alicia Kaplan), brings her to meet everyone, and the preposterousness of the situation has Lane beside herself. At the end of the scene, Mathilde agrees to split her time between Lane's and Ana's houses (even though now everyone knows she doesn't like to clean) and joins Charles and Ana to go apple picking. Apple picking!

As Lane sulks at home, playing cards with Mathilde while Virginia continues to clean, Ana's cancer returns, and she refuses to go to the hospital. "I don't want a relationship with a disease. I want a relationship with death," she says. Charles, doing what any honorable man would, dons a parka and disappears to Alaska to find a yew tree, which he thinks has healing properties. By the time he re-enters, carrying an entire tree, Ana has died as the result of laughter induced by Mathilde's perfect joke.

The play is pretty smart. Characters that may have seemed fresher four years ago when The Clean House premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre could come off as flat and stereotypical, but the way they are manipulated by the actors makes them meta-aware of the play's symbolism. For example, in the "what-do-you-have-that-I-don't" conversation with Ana, Lane exasperates, "You have a balcony!" - a balcony being the setting for Ana's carefree, giddy life with Charles. This production was played in the round with a crisp and imaginative set by Michael Raiford

Though Dave Steakley's direction worked well during comic scenes, heated discussions between Lane and Virginia seemed overwrought and abrasive. It bothered me that Chisholm could not convincingly hold and drink from a coffee cup, although her costume, a frumpy getup straight out of a Swiffer commercial, was perfect for Virginia (costumes by Susan Branch Towne). I questioned the casting: Lauren Lane seemed to play Lane older that the script suggested, and Kaplan and Green had playfulness, but not sensuality as the lovers Charles and Ana. However, Mathilde was played superbly by the enchanting Ciceu; she was wonderfully funny, fresh, and eager. I kind of wanted to take her home too. With a friend like her, who needs a cleaning lady?

Written by: Jonelle Seitz, July 28th 2008