Retro Productions’ latest show, Holy Days (Written by Sally Nemeth and directed by Peter Zinn) comes off as deceptively simply until you’ve sat with it a while.  It’s been several days since I’ve seen it and I find that I’m haunted by the seemingly stark yet surprisingly deep performances by Heather E. Cunningham (Rosie), Joe Forbrich (Gant), Lowell Byers (Will) and Casandera M.J. Lollar (Molly).

Holy Days begins with a metaphor, one which shifts the more you think about it.  At the opening of the play, Rosie addresses the audience with an empty gaze and a lilt-less voice to explain how she had once seen her garden full of daffodils which were in danger of being covered in frost; she gathered as many as she could into her arms, thinking she’d taken more than enough to fill all the vessels she had in the house.  But when she was able to arrange them, they barely filled one pitcher.  She went out to take more, but the remaining flowers were dried up … gone.

Certainly, since Holy Days takes place during the Great Depression in the Dust Bowl, one can make the obvious connection that this story is an analogy for the way life just dried up on the plains, how colors faded and

Casandera M. J. Lollar and Joe Forbrich (photo by Jordana Zeldin)

hope left.  However, sit with this image for a while and it grows deeper – the idea becomes one of need.  Needing to hoard the good moments, feeling almost overwhelmed by them when you have them, thinking you’ve got more life, love, goodness, and prosperity than you can handle, only to find it’s barely enough … and when you move to get another shot at happiness you find the prospects have all dried up.

Holy Days is also a metaphor for death, mourning and rebirth, but mostly it’s about the in-between … the waiting.  For those who know their Christian calendar, these particular holy days in the play refer to Good Friday – the day Christ died, Holy Saturday, the day he was deeply missed and strongly mourned, and Easter Sunday, they day he rose and restored hope and faith.  When we come upon Rosie, her husband Gant, his brother Will, and Will’s wife Molly, they seem to be stuck (metaphorically) in the mournful day of Holy Saturday even as they are literally preparing for Easter.  No doubt their Good Friday has past – clues are passed along thought the ways of their daily life as well as things that are hinted at – yes, the Great Depression has hit, but this family has lost a lot more.   And no doubt their Easter Sunday is coming – Molly is pregnant and full of eager anticipation to start her life; she’s annoyed by anything that smacks of hurt and detachment … she wants fun, and renewal, and affirmation.  And so, this family wallows in this never ending day of waiting … full of mourning for the death they’ve seen in all its forms, and bowed with diminishment … doing what they can to figure out how to keep themselves together even if the only way to accomplish that is through separation.

Heather Cunningham and Joe Forbrich (photo by Jordana Zeldin)

Each of the four characters is strongly carved out; they have all lived through the same dark episode but represent four different stages of acceptance.  Heather E. Cunningham’s Rosie is suffering deeply from a loss which has taken her hope and her heart, but there are still moments of anger in her, and where there’s anger there’s at least a spark of life.  She tightly wraps her depression around her as if it were the ratty sweater she can’t keep from pulling closer and closer.  Joe Forbrich’s Gant is the strong and silent type, he suffers as deeply as his wife, but he’s tasked as “the man” and so he must bear the burden of tending to the farm, looking for work in order to pay the mortgage, and resolutely abiding by the unwritten rules of the times that if going off to build a bridge for three years is what you must do to keep your family together, then you do it without hesitation.  It’s in the quite moments that he drowns his sorrows in liquor and lets the alcohol dull his ache. Casandera M.J. Lollar’s Molly is desperate to cast off these depressing relatives; she’s been part of the tragedies from a distance, and even her closing speech underlines the fact that she is unwilling to give over to this oppressive social and economical environment.  A gesture as simple as needing to color Easter eggs perfectly pinpoints how she must look for the promise of tomorrow.  Unfortunately, it leads to an almost cruel attitude toward her sister-in-law that presents itself in between otherwise mundane moments like baking a pie or milking the cow.  Finally, Lowell Byers’ Will represents youth, energy and hope.  He’s strong, both in character as well as build, and he’s been lucky enough to suffer less than his brother, even while he steadfastly sticks by him.  However, he does suffer for his brother, for the loss and the under-expressed sorrow … he even sheds tears of his own.  But ultimately he’s been spared and that gives him something that’s in short supply around the farm –optimism.  Subtle, but present optimism.

With an amazingly detailed set by  Jack and Rebecca Cunningham and Justin Sturges, and property design by Heather E. Cunningham and Casandera M. J. Lollar the world of this family rises up around you and you can feel the dust come in on the wind every time the door is opened.  While Holy Days could never be called a happy story, it most certainly is a beautiful one, filled with all the places the human spirit goes when facing down its greatest enemy: misfortune.

For an in-depth conversation with Heather Cunningham where she discussed this play, her role as Rosie, and more about her life in the theatre, check out Antonio Minino’s great interview which ran a few weeks ago.

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• Entrevista: Peter Zinn Director Of Benefactors
• “Beautiful Thing” – The Classics Never Age
• Desk Set: Back Then, The Future Was Now
• Eli and Cheryl Jump … Look After You (Fringe Festival 2009)

You can tell it’s Fringe Season when theatres ’round the city are suddenly bustling with life at odd hours of the day and escorting people in and out quickly so they can strike a set and get ready for the next show which is happening in, oh, about a minute.  Yes, it’s all about endings and beginnings at Fringe which is why it’s rather fitting that I started my rounds this year with two very different plays that both dealt with the same fine line between living and dying, and what you do with that quick snap of a moment in between the two blackouts.  Eli and Cheryl Jump takes you off on the wind of fanciful, magical, dreaminess while Look After You shows the realistic portrait of a life interrupted by a flash of illness that comes quickly and takes certainty with it.  Both plays speak to the frailty of what we take for granted every day, both highlight what it means to be a survivor.
On Friday I saw Eli and Cheryl Jump written by Daniel McCoy, directed by Nicole A. Watson and featuring Charles Linshaw  (Eli) and Cassandra Vincent  (Cheryl et al).  I’d had the pleasure of chatting with Dan and interviewing him for this column so I was a little more prepared than my fellow audience members about what to expect at the top of the show.  Still, as promised, Martha Goode’s amazing sound design does much to start this play off with a wail … the pump of adrenaline that went coursing through my system within the first few moments did an amazing job of making me (and I suspect everyone else in the audience) part of the play, not just passive spectators.  It was a very good(e) way of getting 100% audience buy-in right from the get-go.

Eli and Cheryl Jump tells the sometimes magical, sometimes unbelievable story of Eli and his amazing gift of survival.  From a young age Eli could avoid harm, but always had a tricky way of inadvertently sacrificing someone (or something) else in his place, a type of karmic debt handed off to another soul.  Of course, by the time Eli realizes that this is happening it’s already too late … there’s been one too many lives lost and one too many parts of his heart that he can’t seem to function without.  His once joyful dream now  becomes an escape plan;  he runs off  to New York in the hopes of doing less harm in this huge anonymous pool of humanity.  Unfortunately, it’s here that he does perhaps the greatest harm of all.

Cassandra Vincent and Charles Linshaw

There are only two actors in this play, but several characters.  As Eli moves through his life he encounters several pivitol women, each of whom is played by Cassandra Vincent.  While Charles Linshaw has the arc of the story on his shoulders, it is Cassandra Vincent who holds the nuance of the story; with out her and her talent of transforming into the various women in Eli’s life with the simple use of a shawl, or a drawl this would just be the story of a lone, sad man who exiles himself in order to not hurt anyone.  It is also Cassandra’s New York landlady which provides some of the lighter notes to this play, a nice moment of comic relief before the play gets back to business.

The last scene of the play, which brings us back around to the first scene, is so well done that it’s almost too painful to watch.  I was so emotionally transfixed by not only the actual scene being played out, but by the rush of memories (you’ll just have to see it to know what I’m referencing), that I’m not sure I was even remembering to breath until the show was over.  I’d read the script before seeing the show and I’d said to myself  then (after wiping away tears)  … if this is half as good in person as it is on the page I will be a wreck afterwards.

I was.

That’s a good thing … theatre should move people to tears.  Or chills.  Or shaking.  Or all three.

Eli and Cheryl Jump
Ignited States in Association with Crosstown Playwrights
Writer, Daniel McCoy
Director,  Nicole A. Watson
www.ignitedstates.com
VENUE #9: The Players Loft
Remaining Shows:  Thursday August 20 @ 7:15;  Monday August 24 @ 3:15;  Friday August 28 @ 11;  Saturday August 29 @ 12:45

Look After You

Look After You – by Louise Flory, directed by David Stallings

Hannah (Louise Flory) is a photographer which makes sense; this play is not just a snapshot of a life but (to stretch a metaphor) this play shows us Hannah’s world clearly framed through her lens after an aneurysm has taken away a lot of the way she used to look at life.  Her life before is fuzzy and half forgotten, everything which came after is captured in flashes of stark realization.  While a picture may be worth a thousand words, what do you do when some of your pictures are gone?

We come upon Hannah on the cusp of a brain aneurysm; her boyfriend  Jake (Jason Altman)  is devoted to her, which is obvious, but is also slowly growing angry/fearful/uncomfortable [insert not so smiley emotion here] with her condition.  And how couldn’t he be?  Apparently without the engagement ring on her finger (taken off before surgery)  Hannah has forgotten that Jake has asked her to marry him; and in her present condition he’s not so sure he should ask her again.   Flory (wearing her play writing hat) does an excellent job of showing how this is not as black and white as it would appear; this is not simply about a man afraid of committing to a woman who now is living in a limbo state, sometimes remembering things they did, sometimes not, and always living in the shadow of the possibility that she could “re-bleed” any time and die.  (“The statistics are not pretty” we’re reminded over and over again in one form or another of  casual conversation between each pairing of characters). Nor has he stopped loving her now that she is “damaged”.  Rather, he’s contemplative … and sometimes being too thoughtful is a dangerous thing.

Jason is a writer, currently penning a book about Sherpas who scale Everest over and over again without harm despite the threat of avalanches, falling rocks, severe exhaustion, sickness, infections and of course accidental death. By giving Jake an obsession with Sherpas who climb  and always come back,  Flory simultaneously makes Jake heartbreaking yet hopeful.  Here is a man who is consumed with trying to understand how to beat the odds, he needs an answer on what makes a survivor survive.  What is the key, the magic wand, the secret incantation that keeps these Sherpas alive year after year, trip up the mountain after trip up the mountain?  By studying them, will he find it?  And even if he does, will knowing their secret be enough to then save Hannah?

Adi Kurtchik (Lucy) and Louise Flory (Hannah)

In a supporting role is Lucy (Adi Kurtchik), Hannah’s Get-Right-Down-To-Business Sister who arrives like a whirlwind and over turns every stone in the hopes that her sister’s condition is really just the fault of everyone else’s ineptitude (she doesn’t want to hear that anyone else has done research, that any of the mental exercises are strenuous enough, or that Hannah is being realist [read fatalistic] enough).  Kurtchik is an absolute gem, and surprisingly layered; while she plays the one note invasive sister very well, when it’s necessary for her to blow up, or show her softer side she is alternately volcanic and vulnerable and even when she’s annoying Hannah you tend to, if not be on her side, then at least see where she’s coming from.

Similarly, what could have been merely expositional scenery … the role of Jake’s friend Paul … is brought charmingly to life by Lowell Byers.  He’s a bartender by trade and carries the easy grace of someone who’s used to being taken into someone’s confidence. When Jake reveals that Hannah no longer remembers that she and Jake are engaged, Paul argues convincingly and from the heart as to why Jake needs to tell Hannah the truth.  He’s a good best friend to Jake, but over all he’s just a really good friend to Hannah when he needs to be, even though she has no memory of knowing him at all.

Some of the best plays conclude not so much with an ending, but with a beginning, as if what you’ve just watched was the prelude to a life you can now settle back and continue to imagine.  Look After You is definitely one of those plays.  At the end we’re left with just as many unanswered questions about these characters, their lives, their motives, what will happen next, and how it will all bear out, but at least we now know them all a little better, and we had the opportunity to walk in their shoes for a little while.

Look After You
Maieutic Theatre Works-MTWorks
Writer, Louise Flory
Director, David Stallings
www.LookAfterYouThePlay.com
VENUE #16: The SoHo Playhouse
Remaining Shows:  Friday August  28 @ 9:30  Saurdtay August  29 @ 1:30

I plan on seeing as many of the Fringe shows as I can; look for more of my reviews here and on The Fab Marquee.
For more information about Fringe click here  …

Related Posts:

• Jumping Into The Fringe with Daniel McCoy (Fringe Festival 2009)
• The 2012 National Newborn Festival Is Almost Here!
• A Day In The Life … “The Family Shakespeare” By The Numbers
• MTWorks National NewBorn Festival Kicks Off Tonight
• Small Town, Big Show – “Barrier Island”