Tuesday, February 24, 1998
Every passing moment reveals theatrical flaws
THEATER: Stilted writing and awkward staging overshadow
interesting theme
By Sam Toussi
Daily Bruin Contributor
Racism, and not just American racism, has been a deep well for
theatrics over the years. Theater educates us as much as it pains
us because these stories are not always about external conflict
(i.e. one person against another person). Sometimes social and
racial problems must be reconciled within one character.
³Passing,² now playing at the Towne Street Theatre, is a
play about just that. Yet the play falls far short of its lofty
goals.
The play is set in 1927 New York where a cold, loveless woman
named Irene (Lisa Ann Collins), Rene for short, blandly goes
through the life it seems her surroundings have forced upon her.
Her husband is Brian Redfield (Billy Mayo), a prominent African
American doctor and they have two sons. Yet there is something
missing in her life. She and her husband sleep in separate rooms
and the cold, almost formal relationship they have would appear to
be a rut in a long marriage if the marriage had not been cold from
the start.
Then, one day, out of the blue, Rene¹s close childhood
friend, Clare (Nancy Cheryll Davis) returns to Rene¹s life
after a few years. Clare is a free spirit and at the same time,
deeply disturbed. Abused as a child, she attempts to fill a void in
her life.
One thing Clare and Rene have in common is that they are both
extremely light African Americans, so much so that they can pass
for whites (hence the title). Clare is married to Jack Bellew who
has absolutely no idea that his wife is black and he is a racist to
boot. The realities of 1920s America make it necessary for them to
try and pass as white as often as possible. Sounds promising,
huh?
Director Sy Richardson wields this complicated story very poorly
in several ways. It¹s a director¹s job to capture a
play¹s sense of rhythm and timing. The play features over 25
different scenes with blackouts between every scene. Each blackout
lasts about five seconds (which lasts an eternity when you¹re
sitting there in the dark) and disrupts the play anytime it gets a
rhythm going. Richardson also saw fit to have his actors change
costume an infinite number of times to convey sets that the
audience could have easily imagined leaving the actors with broken
concentration and even missed cues.
Los Angeles is the farthest thing from a theater city and stages
here tend to be small, but that¹s no excuse to have the actors
stand absolutely still through scenes lasting up to five minutes.
Richardson, throughout the play, leaves his actors standing two
feet apart, perfectly motionless and struggling to express emotions
as deep as love and rage. It¹s like dancing in a straight
jacket.
The script itself is rough and coarse, failing to advance the
plot at an even rate: at times it is sluggish and at others it
moves too quickly to adequately express any emotion. Also,
didn¹t they have contractions like ³doesn¹t²
and ³wouldn¹t² in the 1920s? Sheri Bailey, the
scribe of ³Passing,² would like you to believe that there
weren¹t. That might not seem like a big deal, but the actors
are obviously confused and tripped up by the unusual, deliberate
dialogue that every character in the play speaks.
So that brings us to the actors. They have been failed by their
director and their playwright. Collins and Davis explore a unique
dynamic but barely scratch the surface before the play blows the
whistle on them. Halfway through the Act 2, the play takes a
violent twist and leaves its racial theme in the dust and
degenerates into a melodramatic love triangle. The problem is that
by the time the twist comes, the actors are left with such an
abrupt curve that they don¹t have the emotional resource to
play the rest of the show with sincerity.
One performer who provides a spark is Tomas Boykin who plays
Albert Brickhouse, a childhood friend of both Clare and Rene. He
often asks them, ³Are you white or black today?²
It¹s funny but it¹s the only time the play deals with the
problems of passing effectively. Unfortunately, it¹s as
effective as it is comic, leaving a promising play mired in its own
ineptitude.
THEATER: ³Passing² runs through March 29 at the Towne
Street Theatre, 799 South Towne Ave. Tickets are $15, $10 for
students.
Bel Ami Studios
³Passing² is runs through March 29 at the Towne Street
Theatre.