Scratch any of the characters in Smith College’s Festival of One Act Plays (Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre, February 25-27 and March 3-6) and a wounded soul will be revealed. The graduate student-penned works–Scarlet P by Kendra Arimoto, Board of Review by Darren Harned, and Detour by Roger Gordon–explore, with varying success, the wages of emotional inauthenticity. In each work, someone is pushed to unearth and confront truths they would rather repress: the circumstances surrounding a sibling’s death, a haunting sense of failure, or a troubling act from their past. The plays resonate most in these moments, despite their occasional lack of subtlety or (sadly) creativity. The trajectory of the evening reflected the law of diminishing returns (a metaphor the hapless young protagonist of Board of Review might appreciate), with each play less satisfying than the last. Fortunately, cohesion was achieved through committed performances and excellent technical design, culminating in an enjoyable, if uneven, experience.
The evening began with Scarlet P, Kendra Arimoto’s tautly written character study of grief and anguish following a female soldier’s death. Sisters Micaela (Tara Amber) and Mari were serving side-by-side in the Iraq War when Mari was killed by mortar fire outside Fallujah. Upon returning home, Micaela is reunited with Mari’s widower Britt (Rory Madden), whose sorrow is as palpable as Micaela’s is restrained. Dressed in work clothes that appear to have been pulling triple shifts, Britt’s bearing betrays the despair of his mourning. Micaela, upright and self-contained, closely guards her knowledge of her sister’s death in spite of Britt’s persistent questioning.
Following a few stunning moments in which each characters’ trauma is revealed–Micaela suffers a flashback, Britt is tormented by a nightmare–they form a tenuous bond that is later broken as quickly as it was created, with Britt lashing out at a crucial moment. Their falling out depicts the complicated realities of life in today’s military and the estranging nature of grief, with Micaela’s development from stoic to vulnerable and back again establishing the play’s emotional core.
Both actors fare well in their roles: The nervous energy Madden brings to Britt feels appropriate for a broken man wondering what the hell just happened to his life. As Micaela, Amber deftly adds a touch of cynical humor to her character’s flinty personality. The wonderful production design set the standard for the rest of the evening: the casual disarray of Britt’s once-cozy home along with the “Support Our Troops” magnet on the refrigerator tell his story quite well on their own, and the light and sound work during Britt’s dream is indelibly striking.
Equally timely–but more humorous–was the evening’s second offering, the monologue Board of Review by Darren Harned. As director Roger Gordon writes in his program notes, the play “brings perspective to the issue of fear of financial collapse.” Yet there is more at stake here than economic ruin. Harned’s script juxtaposes the loss or gain of revenue with the idea of a “good” or “bad” year of personal growth.
The outcome of the protagonist’s year is painfully clear: Division G Leader (Troy Davis Mercier) must account for his poor leadership skills as his personal failures loom in the distance; in spite of this, he attempts to remain positive. In one of the play’s funnier moments, he flips a disastrous-looking chart upside down, suggesting that this change of perspective indicates economic gain, not loss. Eventually, Division G Leader is left to accept his weaknesses: “It never occurred to me that I might be a failure,” he admits in the play’s final moments. In this admission, his burden is lifted, and he promises to learn from his shortcomings and maybe, next year, come out ahead instead of breaking even.
Clad in a business suit as beige as his surroundings (a pitch-perfect re-creation of an aggressively bland conference room, stocked with nineties-era office paraphernalia), Mercier paces the stage, imbuing his ill-fated character with a not-so-quiet desperation accompanied by an unflagging cheerfulness. Although he is a likable actor with impeccable comic timing, Mercier’s spirited performance was occasionally ill-suited for the piece’s moments of pathos: The audience did not seem to know when to stop laughing at the character and when to begin empathizing with him.
Unfortunately, not even dedicated actors could make the characters in Roger Gordon’s stale play Detour empathetic. Vacationing couple Laura (EvaClaire Albion-Wright) and Howard (Matt Bussler) have been married five years but could have met the day before, as they spend an inordinate amount of time explaining what they are like and how they feel. On their first vacation since their marriage, Howard insists that he and Laura make a stop in his old neighborhood. Tired and bored, Laura complains. A lot. Howard is put on the defensive, unwilling to explain why this detour is important to him, and the couple begins to argue. The airing of everyday grievances leads to the revelation of uncomfortable secrets, including a dark moment from Howard’s past.
Once the particulars of Howard’s actions–past and present–are revealed, however, it is difficult to care about the fate of the characters’ marriage. With tired, battle-of-the-sexes character development that could have been culled from any mainstream movie or television show, Howard and Laura were so stilted and unappealing in the play’s first twenty minutes that asking an audience to feel for them in the final ten is a stretch. Even the actors’ best efforts could not improve matters, as they often seemed more concerned with emoting and hitting their appointed marks than evoking depth of feeling. Compared to the careful, gradual unveiling of secrets and personal truths displayed in Scarlet P and Board of Review, Detour came off rather ham-fisted and trite. Regrettably, some depths are not worth plumbing.
