What if you had done something not necessarily evil, but very disturbing?  Enough to make you an outcast in society?   Hot Steams explores the lives of two imprisoned men who are mentally brilliant but socially inept.

We first meet The Man Awake (played by Zach Wegner), who has been in his cell awhile, as he writes in chalk upon the  floor, only to erase it, rewrite it … over and over again. On the other side of the cell is The Sleeping Man in a Santa suit, passed out with a pool of vomit beside him, which (according to Man Awake) is apparently from a night of heavy drinking by the smell of things.

When the Sleeping Man (Braeson Herold) finally awakes The Man Awake tells his story:  The long-time prisoner has an obsession with collecting (and caring for) the skulls of the deceased, starting from when his parents had died.   He was much young when they died, and with no one checking in on him, he was left to let them decompose for some time.   Eventually the act of  detaching, cleaning, and caring for his parents’ skulls gave him the sense of closure he hadn’t been able to get elsewhere.  After that it became an obsession which haunted him — driving him to find more skulls to add to his collection which now reside in his suitcase.

A twist involving grave-robbing, an unsolved murder, and wrong-place-wrong time leads The Man Awake to be imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.  This sets into motion one of the largest bits of dramatic tension in this play: did The Man Awake do something evil? Or just distasteful?  And should we sympathize with him? Of course there is also the question of the other man being kept in his prison cell, but there is one more wrinkle to unfold.

We meet the Officer (played by Timothy Weinert) who (at times roughly) interrogates the formerly Sleeping Man and almost always is too personal as he works to find out what SM has learned about his cellmate, MA.  But often it is just rhetoric which creates a narrative for the other prisoner rather than incriminating evidence.  Weinert gives a very convincing performance as a brutish guard-cum-inquisitor who has all the power, but still has a shade of something else brewing beneath the surface which makes him lash out even more viciously when confronted with his lack of knowledge about the criminals under his “care”.

Immediately a feeling of “why” fills the room like a miasma which only gets thicker as time goes on. What playwright Zach Wegner does in Hot Steams is help  us understand that sometimes a prison is often  just the outward manifestation of  the walls that can hold back people who are misunderstood by society.  The fact that some of the thoughts that the characters have are disturbing only helps us remember a time when maybe we have harshly judged someone or been harshly judged, just for being different.

The set design is very basic- simply a door and then the stage itself outlined in various configurations. Books are in stacks and passed throughout the show.  There is a box on one side and a chair which only shows up when illuminated by a single spotlight – representing the inquisition chamber where the second prisoner is questioned.

The writing (by Zachary Wegner) and direction (by Jaclyn Biskup) work hand in hand to create a well timed play that keeps you spellbound throughout. Numerous dramatic pauses and silences are exquisitely painful;  this style of play is a treat for someone who likes to think and wants to see others doing the same.  The costumes by Deirdre Wegner give a beautiful Noir flair, that helps suck you into this world.

Throughout the play, there are numerous literary references and other interesting and elaborate wordplay. From poetry by Yeats or William Blake, to the corny detective story of “Joey Tonsillitis, Private Dick”, many fun and beautiful words are worked into this piece.  At times profound, at times laugh-out-loud gallows humor – even moments of subversive nonsense –  the Man Awake shows us the appeal of living in a dream-world made of random books and paper.  As he tells his favorite stories and ideas, he illuminates his view of the world as a lonely and often hostile place, one which doesn’t understand where he’s coming from.  His hope of salvation from a pen pal of sorts, “Anita Kiss”, shows us in stages the depths of his misunderstanding of the world at large. Perhaps the prison is actually a good place of nurturing quiet contemplation, and his second cellmate provides more social interaction than he has had in years…

But what does the title mean?  What are the Hot Steams that are behind the pressure cooker of this drama?

In part it may come from a southern folklore legend popularized by its mention in To Kill a Mockingbird, quoted toward the end of the play.

“What’s a Hot Steam?” asked Dill.

“Haven’t you ever walked along a lonesome road at night and passed by a hot place?” Jem asked Dill. “A Hot Steam’s somebody who can’t get to heaven, just wallows around on lonesome roads an’ if you walk through him, when you die you’ll be one too, an’ you’ll go around at night suckin’ people’s breath -”

Are one or more of the characters actual spirits, with the ability to inflict the type of damnation that is described above?  As you watch, it seems that regardless of whether the supernatural is involved you definitely feel the seductive pull of Wegner’s words which make you want to understand – even empathize  - with the three characters in this play who are all trapped by various layers of social restraint.   Finally the simple and  innocent prison of being different in the lonely world of The Man Awake makes him one of the strangest tragic heroes in a long time, with his prison of hope that grips him until the very end.

The biting social commentary of how the misunderstood are often imprisoned while the State works to find a charge that will keep them isolated from society is fit both within as well as inbetween the lines of this play.  The fact that most in a similar situation such as this do not get the chance to tell their story makes the charity that this play supports, the Innocence Project very fitting.  A small organization reviewing the many cases they receive each year of the often poor and forgotten by society, The Innnocence Project supports a limited number of cases who have used up all other legal avenues.  Their hope is that DNA evidence could shed enough light on their case for an appeal for their innocence.  Find out more here: http://www.innocenceproject.org/.

Hot Steams is a perfect example of classic absurdist theatre that I hope some day might become a classic itself. I certainly hope we get to see more of this play in the future.

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Hot Steams played as part of 2012 Planet Connections Theatre Festivity.

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Thinking about cheating on your wife?  Maybe first you should take in Andy James Hoover’s Corner Pocket (directed by Bridget R. Durkin).  After an evening of watching recently murdered professional pool player Glen O’Hara (James Liebman) juggle the ghost of the wife who is accused of murdering him (murdered herself soon after), his not-so-grieving girlfriend (who bounces back surprisingly fast), and the two sisters who work to make sense of his tragic ending (one wild and flaky, one ordered and logical) one can easily see that Glen might have been better off keeping his cue stick in his own pocket.  Because nothing about what leads up to his chalk outline seems to have been worth it.

Corner Pocket begins with the deceased widow, Manayunk  (It’s where I was conceived) O’Hara (Virginia Logan) … discovering she’s a ghost – fated to hang out in her house and watch her husband’s sisters converge until she and her Spirit Animal Guy (a very animated Eric Sutton) figure out her next step, which could be Oblivion, Reincarnation or some other choice — clearly spelled out in a pile of brochures which she’s encouraged to peruse.  But Manayunk is having none of it.  She’s an angry one – still mad at her husband for cheating on her, now even madder that she’s been murdered.  Unfortunately some details of how it all went down are hazy so she’s hanging around till they get cleared up.  In the meantime she’s going to wreak all the havoc she can which – to her and Guy’s surprise – is quite a lot.  Then again, she didn’t make her way to being a world ranking pool champ by being a pushover.  However, this woman is angry – so sit back.  This revenge plot could take awhile.

Alexandra Hellquist in Corner Pocket (Photo Credit: Ellen B. Wright)

Soon enough Glen’s sisters arrive; level headed Karen (Kari Swenson Riely) the older of the two who carves out a living as a chef and is back at the house to get things in order.  Within moments her free-spirited much younger sister Kym (Mary Schneider) arrives with no notion as to what she’s there for except to hang out, talk about what happened, and put various odds and ends into her huge bag.  After some exposition and more surreptitious theft ex-mistress (and another world ranked pool champion) Tessa (Alexandra Hellquist) arrives at the house.   There’s some arguing, some things blow up, Glen makes an appearance, some people become possessed (or at least, compelled), the past is shown through some flashback reenactments, puppets make an appearance (of both the shadow and hand variety), there’s a fight scene which includes a goldfish, there’s a strip down that leads to a lesbian make-out scene and … let’s see … am I leaving anything out?  I may be, but rest assured, Hoover didn’t.

There’s a lot going on in Corner Pocket.  To be fair, a  lot of the action makes sense.  But  a lot more of it pulls the focus from the main plot so drastically that it’s difficult for the audience to find the thread back to the main plot whenever it does appear.

In an effort to keep things interesting Hoover has not only written dynamic characters and delivered a thoughtful script (which is where he should have stopped) but then added in far too many bells and whistles, overdressing his story like a Jersey Shore cast member who’s on her way to the club.  The script contains just a few too many cutesy movie references, the addition of puppets would have worked better as sound cues and the random partial nudity (all but two characters strip down to their skivvies) seemed pointless (yes, even in the lesbian make-out scene).  And I’m someone who’s all in favor of seeing random stripping – if it serves the plot.  But very little of anything here served the plot which, at its core, was actually very intriguing and something I would have loved to have been able to enjoy, if only the story could have stayed out of its own way.

Bridget Durkin’s direction is  jumbled and overblown with far too much scenery chewing in an already busy production.  Characters are entering, exiting and playing from too many spots in the theatre and audience seating blends in with the stage which was distracting and pulled focus.  There are moments when there’s so much going on that between the action, the sound cues and the props this felt like a three ring circus.  Just because your characters play pool for a living doesn’t mean the action has to ricochet around the theatre like errant billiard balls.

A subtler hand might have eased a few of the crazier angles and let some of the deeper points of the story resonate.  For instance, during a moment when Glen is confessing to his wife that he loved his mistress in a way that didn’t interfere with his marriage the moment was genuine and true; you could honestly believe how this man got to the point of being with two women, needing them both equally and not seeing how one had anything to do with the other.  This is the heart of the play.  This is the very reason we’re here – it’s why Manayunk can’t move on, and why she’s driven by so much rage.  But just as the notion begins to crystallize the crazy carnival of Hoover’s story takes hold again and the focus is pulling away in all directions.

Corner Pocket can’t decide if it’s an exploration of the afterlife, an analysis of where betrayal lies within the parameters of a marriage, or just a good old fashioned ghost story.  Any one of these paths could have been pulled off well, but all three just didn’t make the braid that Hoover was hoping to execute.  It’s a wonderful thing when all the side-plots coalesce into a greater point instead of just creating noise that obscures the main plot.   With the right combination of re-writes, new direction and reworking Corner Pocket could be a solid bank shot.  But as it stands now it’s a scratch.

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