Reach the top of the stairs of Quinn’s Bar and Grill and you’ll no longer be in the heart of midtown, elbow to elbow with the crowds maneuvering through the streets; swivel-headed tourists getting in the way of fast walking commuters rushing for the A train.  No, somehow, mid-staircase you’ll be transported to a small bar in Queens run by the personable Sean, patronized by the chatty Stella and transfigured by the team of Penny Jackson’s Bitten.

Come early and you’ll get some personal attention from bartender Sean and barfly Stella (played by Logan McCoy and Lucy McMichael respectively).  Depending on the day you may get some candy, and you’ll definitely get a bit of a chat up.   How you interact with the players before the show begins is up to you – feel free to give real answers to their just-passing-the-time questions … or as real as you feel like giving.  After all, this is theatre and your participation in it beforehand can be as much or as little as you wish.   It’s not your job to be entertaining after all … it’s all just a bit of fun before the actual story is brought to life around you in this site-specific play.  Bring your thirst, however – the bar that flanks the wall is fully functional and well stocked.

BITTEN begins with a joyful jig before it unfolds into a seemingly straightforward story. But like the rings of condensation left on a bar, these interlocking stories are ingrained enough to leave their mark.  Look closer and each facet of this tale has an undercurrent that tells of a hidden longing that is either the promise of a new world or the foreboding of an unfortunate eventuality.

Bartender Sean (Logan McCoy)

Bartender Sean (a delightful, affable McCoy) is attentive to his favorite aging barfly, Stella (played by McMichael as a whirling dervish of tipsy flirtation). The elderly lady has obviously had one … or more … too many as she dashes about and burbles about this and that in a lilting brogue that mirrors young Sean’s.  While at first glance it may seem that tonight is about as ordinary as many of the evenings which have come before it, we soon find that before the night is through Stella will be faced with two proposals – one of marriage and one of moving to a retirement home in New Jersey at the request of her grandson. All of this will unfold in the 10 minutes it takes to wait for car service to arrive.  But if you’ve ever waited for a livery cab to take you from Queens to New Jersey at night as the snowfall begins to threaten an impending storm, you know those 10 minutes are arbitrary and more than enough time to tell a good story.

Sean, early 20s, may seem like a good natured regular Joe just off the boat from Ireland, but when he’s not wiping down the bar and passing out the Irish whiskey he lets a little dream of continuing his education at Fordam creep into his thoughts.  Given the chance to dream a bit, and encouraged along by Mrs. O’Conner (Stella! she’ll remind him) you can see the mixture of resignation and doubt on his face.  Is he really meant to do more than what is required to keep alive the legacy of sustaining the bones of the family bar?  No doubt he’s smart enough to make the change, but is he willing to take the risk?

Bar patron Professor Alexi Negretsky, (a deeply charming J. Dolan Byrnes) is a man who’s lost his hearing aid for the sixth time and his heart to Stella more times than he can count.  Alexi is also dreaming a dream that’s just out of reach.  No longer teaching Molecular Biology in Russia he now spends his days fixing copiers and his nights sitting in Quinn’s wooing Stella and proposing to her as often as he can in the hopes of marrying her.   While she persistently declines she is no doubt quite fond of him and the two, according to Sean “… enjoy their toasts.  Their many toasts.  Sometimes they’re spread out on the floor like corpses”.   This isn’t quite as sinister as it sounds, for while it seems that each contributes to the other’s vice perhaps Billy Joel put it best when he noted “they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness … but it’s better than drinking alone.”

Director Joan Kane has saturated Jackson’s elder lovers with all the hallmarks of young infatuation – they are romantic, affectionate, giddy, giggly, distracted by each other and even rather impetuous.  There are moments when one can not be sure that the intoxication is from the drink which they both adore, or the shared merriment of rubbing a new sheen on an old feeling.  Perhaps, in the case of these two, it’s a little of both – as the Professor is known to pass out in the bar around 6:30 each night, and his affectionate pet name for his amour is “Stella Stoli” after the vodka.  Still, relationships have been built on less and there’s no denying that there is a deep fondness underneath all the crowing, the posturing and the apparent foolhardiness.

The Professor speaks with the flowered tongue of a man in love, setting Stella off like a top as she whirls about the bar in a fit of girlish ebullience. It’s part inviting, part unseemly and – to Stella’s grandson Brian – it’s downright disturbing and uncomfortable.

Nick Palladino as Brian – BITTEN

When Brian (Nick Palladino who perfectly paces the unwrapping of his tightly-wrapped character) enters Quinn’s this snowy evening he’s a man on a mission: to get his grandmother Stella out of the bar.  Not just for the night but for good; tonight is the last chance they have to meet with Dr. Patel of Sunset House – an old age home (Supervised Adult Community corrects Brian) “with a garden and a greenhouse and the recreational room with HDTV”.  Brian, raised by Stella and the now-deceased Frank after his mother ran off, wants nothing but the best for the grandmother who cared for and nurtured him.  He also needs to save Stella from the eviction that looms and the whisky that beckons.  Brian has his own hands full – as well as tied.  He’s a doctor with a full patient load and when he’s not attending to women as a gynecologist he’s volunteering his time at a rape crisis center.  He sees his fair share of women in pain, in need, and past the point of no return.  As he works to balance all of that, he now must fold in the management of hearing stories about his grandmother who drinks too much and stumbles home at 3:00am … who forgets appointments, who sets the tea cozy too close to the burner and almost burns down her apartment … and who would just make everything easier if she went to Sunset House.   Brian is also struggling with his sexuality, but love is something that doesn’t fit neatly or start and end cleanly and so therefore he’s compartmentalized it as he has so much of his feelings and emotions.

On the surface, perhaps these four wouldn’t overlap much on a Venn Diagram.  Some like to drink.  Some are related.  Some are from Ireland.  Stella is the connection that’s easy to spot.   But underneath, they’re all wondering if the future is already written, or something that sheer force of will can change.  Is Sean destined to work behind a bar?  Is Stella destined to pass along silently into her sunset years at Sunset House?  Is Brian destined to only keep faithful to the parts of his life he can control: his job, his neatly measured out moments and appointments and time-marked meetings without giving in to the recklessness of letting love make you feel stupid and foolish … and lovely and awful and terrified and glorious?

Penny Jackson’s characters quite unexpectedly take the audience on a journey that will certainly hit a note with anyone who has ever felt at  a crossroads – unsure about that next step, unable to ask for help, unwilling to admit that help is something that doesn’t automatically appear – and certainly not always in the form we desire.  Each of these characters, despite their differences in age, in background, and in dreams feels somewhat marginalized, perhaps a bit criticized, and even the youngest among them feel the years marching on with choices not as plentiful as they’d once hoped.  Each character is leaving Quinn’s with a fear – or at least a tremor – of the unknown.

BITTEN isn’t about an elderly woman who must decide if she can face her golden years in a retirement home.  At its heart, BITTEN is about our human need to feel we have a choice, and that we have another one after that one.  It is about the fervent wish that we all have an endless amount of choices – all filled with the possibilities of what we wish for ourselves.  BITTEN is also about how we handle ourselves the moment we realize that while we still have choices, they may no longer overlap with our hopes.   Eventually we’re all bound to find ourselves on that path.  Maybe, before you head out on that path, though … grab one last drink at Quinn’s.

~~~
Ego Actus presents a site-specific production
BITTEN
by Penny Jackson
directed by Joan Kane

Quinn’s Bar and Grill (2nd Floor)
356 W 44th St
New York, NY
Thursday, Friday and Saturday FEB 6 – 22nd at 8:00pm.
All tickets are $10 cash at the door.
For reservations call (646) 246-4131.

Related Posts:

• SAFE Is A Matter Of Perspective (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• SAFE – 5 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• The Foreplay Play – What Comes Before
• It Is Done – Careful What You Wish For

How do you know when you’re safe?  Is it when you’re home?  Or when your loved ones are around you?  What about when you were a teen … how did you know it then?  There’s no doubt that being a teen-aged girl is a minefield and without the right road map a young girl will find herself in a dangerous, explosive situation.  In the world of Safe playwright Penny Jackson has created just such a minefield for her two young characters, Nina and Liz.  And then she creates a trap for them to run smack into.

There’s a great line that comes around two thirds into the play when one of the characters notes how kids who grow up in Manhattan are like homeless kids … they have homes but no one’s really raising them.  And so it is for Nina (Debby Brand) and her best friend Liz (Alexandra Gjerpen).  When we first meet Nina she’s dejectedly smoking a cigarette in her father’s big apartment, waiting for him to come home from yet another one of his business trips to notice that she’s now living with him.  Apparently she’s been living there alone for two days, but the situation doesn’t seem to unsettle her.  When her father does arrive he greets her perfunctorily, exchanges information much the way (one would think) he instructs his business partners to get him up to speed on a project, and distractedly inquires about her overall well being.  When he acknowledges her smoking, the annoyance that bubbles up is regarding the fact that she was using an antique as an ashtray – not that she was using her lungs as a dumping ground for toxic chemicals.  The best he can muster is a guess that she must be smoking to curb her appetite.

Her dad, Paul, (David Lamberton) is a workaholic who is divorced from Nina’s troubled alcoholic mother who lives in another state.  Paul barely has time to finish a conversation before he’s answering another call, packing up for another trip, and making something else a priority.  Well, at least he isn’t around to make another thoughtless comment about her (non-existent) weight problem.  While one would rather see Nina in a safe haven of a home that has a parent in it, when it comes to this parent, maybe being alone is actually the lesser of two evils.

Young Liz’s home-life is no better; her mother encourages the anorexic/bulimic Liz to smoke pot so that she’ll have the munchies.  Liz is the yin to Nina’s yang, both girls suffering from body issues.  Liz has actually been hospitalized for her disorder which seemed to do nothing but give her an opportunity to explore her sexuality with a boy who was also there – and is no longer around.   On the surface Nina and Liz take these rather jarring events of their young lives in stride, but there’s no denying all these thousand little cuts are taking their toll on each girl’s overall psychological health.  So Nina and Liz do what unmonitored teen girls do best: they drink too much tequila, experiment with dangerous drugs (Liz unearths a hidden stash of Fen-Phen), and … perhaps worst of all, find themselves emotionally vulnerable to the first kind stranger who happens to cross their path.

At first Phillip (Nick Palladino) comes across as a helpful mentor, an understanding adult Nina happens upon in the Starbucks she uses as a place to do her homework and hang out.  Phillip and Nina “meet cute” after she spills her coffee on him.  This leads to some conversation which allows him to offer that, although he is a writer he was once a math tutor which makes it so perfect that she happens to be having trouble with math.  She gets some help with her homework and is in his debt when he chivalrously leaves his umbrella for her.  Like any other young teen she is immediately smitten and begins to fixate on her new friend.

With less and less making her feel safe at home she willingly dives into a burgeoning friendship with Phillip – and with no other adult to warn her off she finds the whole experience romantic and exhilarating.  Even Liz’s admonishment merely sounds like jealousy to Nina’s ears.  Phillip carefully plays his hand – he is understanding, he listens … he cares.  He gives advice and encouragement to the awkwardly shy Nina – he takes her to the museum and compares her to the Rubens.  He points out her beauty and encourages her inner strength.  In the right setting he’d be doing her a world of good.  But that’s what makes him so good at setting the trap.

After presenting a strong cautionary tale with believable circumstances playwright Jackson then leaves the story with a questionable ending with intentions that are undecipherable.   The girls uncover Phillip for what he is, in the wake of which Nina has a near-suicide experience.  All too suddenly she is seen flying off to her unstable mother (who is not expecting her) declaring herself healed and stronger for the experience and ready to take on the world.

This sudden switch feels manufactured and misdirected: the actual actions of Nina seem dangerous and ill-advised, while the sentiment of the ending is played as a happily every after moment.   Perhaps the ending would ring truer for an older woman  … an “I need to go find myself!” anthem, but here it sits as an out-0f-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire situation.  I wasn’t convinced that Nina had grown enough, or that anyone – especially her work-obsessed father – had felt enough of an impact from the devastating chain of events to have learned anything.   Rather than a happy ending, I saw this as a frightening one for this traumatized, confused, lost girl who needs to be parented properly.  Nina needs to be counseled by a man with degrees on his wall, not a string of lies in his past.  I feel that we were meant to be left hoping for Nina, but unfortunately after bringing her so far I feel as if she was simply left abandoned again.

However, aside from the ending, Jackson did an incredible job with the character of Phillip … probably one of the most difficult archetypes to capture.   It was easy to understand why the young, aimless, desperate Nina would find Phillip so charming, so – yes – SAFE.  Nick Palladino did a solid job of making the audience wonder at times if he really was just a misunderstood guy who had a lot of bad breaks and was just looking out for Nina with a platonic warmth.  These are the hardest characters to create and Jackson wrote Phillip with a balanced pen.  Palladino delivers a layered performance and gives the audience room to both understand his charm through the eyes of a teen while still see the red flags through the eyes of an adult.

Joan Kane’s direction is firm throughout; she understands how to coax out the subtle moments which needed to speak louder than the roar of general adolescence.  Some of the most powerful scenes Kane created happened in the quiet seduction, such as when Phillip leaves his umbrella behind for Nina.

Safe, which benefits the National Eating Disorder Association, does a satisfying job of presenting the despair a teen girl with body issues faces – and the lengths she will got to in order to feel safe.  However, as Nina points out – we all look to something to feel safe – be it work, alcohol, pills … it’s all various forms of our need to feel in control.  The real warning here is not just for teens who may fall prey to charming men, but to parents who may put work before their children, to those who try to drink their stress away and find they suddenly can’t get through the day without a drink, or to people who find themselves unhealthily attracted to something that is clearly wrong.  Penny Jackson’s message is explicit – if you’re out of control, get yourself to a place where you can feel Safe.

~~~

Related Posts:

• SAFE – 5 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• BITTEN – One Last Drink
• The Taint Of Equality Or, I Want Your Sex (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• Pageant Princess – Music, Make-Up And Meltdowns (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• Bubby’s Shadow: Whose Shadow Is It? (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)

Safe

Benefiting: National Eating Disorders Association
Produced by Ego Actus
Written by Penny Jackson
Directed by Joan Kane

“SAFE is a drama set in Manhattan about two unhappy teenagers, one anorexic and the other overweight, who find themselves in danger when they encounter charming Phillip, an older teacher with a dangerous secret.”

Show Times:

• Fri 6/1/12 – 7:00pm
• Sat 6/2/12 – 3:00pm
• Mon 6/4/12 – 10:00pm
• Wed 6/6/12 – 4:00pm
• Sat 6/9/12 – 8:00pm
• Thu 6/14/12 – 6:00pm

Answers by Penny Jackson
(Playwright)

Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
How did you come up with the title for your show?
Penny: As a teacher and parent, I would always hear the term “safe” when discussing children and adolescents. I decided to write about two teenage girls who, although they may be protected by money, find themselves in real danger by their parents’ selfishness and the pressure of today’s world for women to be physically perfect.

Diánna Martin’s Question
If you were going to invite 5 people (from the past or present) to see your show – who would you invite … and why?
Penny: I would invite Sylvia Plath because she understood the pressures of being a too smart woman and of course because she wrote “The Bell Jar”, which is a book that one of my main characters, Liz, reads in the treatment center for her anorexia. I would invite Queen Elizabeth I because she was not only one of the most powerful women in history, but also supported playwrights. I would invite Virginia Woolf, who convinced me, as well as so many other female writers, to find a room of my own. In the present I would invite Sarah Ruhl, a playwright I so admire, and Toni Morrison, the Novel prize winning novelist, whose “Bluest Eye” is such a lovely and powerful book about identity.

Antonio Minino’s Question
What is the biggest sacrifice you’ve made for your art and was it worth it?
Penny: Sleep. When I’m writing, I can’t sleep because my mind is still composing dialogue and scenes. I’m also a real nervous wreck every time I see my work performed. But even tired and jittery, it’s still worth it.

Geoffrey Paddy Johnson’s Question
Was there any unexpected discovery made during the development of this production and can you share it with us?
Penny: As a novelist who spends way too much time alone in front of my computer, I really appreciate the collaborative effort it takes to create a play. I have learned so much from my director, my producer, my actors, and all the other wonderfully talented people involved in my production team. My play , like a child, truly needs a village to mature. What started as an observation about bullying in a high school class is now a fully realized dramatic work.

Michelle Augello-Page’s Question
What do you hope the audience receives from the experience of seeing this show?
Penny: I hope that my adults in my audience will remember that when you are an adolescent, you cannot see the future, and that every day to a young person can feel like the last day. I hope that my young members of the audience will be able to see beyond their present and that the future is indeed within their grasp. I also hope that my play shows that if we believe that advertising and the media dictates the way we must look and behave, then we are not safe.

___

Planet Connections runs from May 30 – June 24 at The Bleecker Street Theater located at 45 Bleecker Street, New York, NY.  To purchase tickets to this or any of the shows click here.

Related Posts:

• SAFE Is A Matter Of Perspective (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• Bubby’s Shadow: Whose Shadow Is It? (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• The American Play (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• Scene/Unseen – 5 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)
• Coyote On A Fence – FREE Staged Reading – 5 Things To Know About The Show Before You Go (2012 Planet Connections Festivity)