The Happiest Medium » The Arclight Theater

Is Anyone Ever “Acting Alone”?

Karen Tortora-Lee — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:47:55 +0000

Acting Alone

Today, on the 46th anniversary of the death of JFK, there are still two kinds of people in this world – those who believe that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald who was acting alone, and those who believe that Kennedy’s assassination was a highly orchestrated, multiple-person operative with ties to the CIA, the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, the Mafia and the KGB, among others. Acting Alone by  David  M. Korn and  directed  by  Lee  Gundersheimer  brings forth a bit of a third option – that even when someone is acting alone, they are still the product of those around them, and ultimately those loved one share much of the burden, a back-splash of the guilt, and even a whisper of the responsibility.

The life of Lee Harvey Oswald isn’t very noteworthy to American History, rather it is his one single decision to shoot the President that is the story and therefore we rarely (if ever) think about the man as anything but an assassin. But, cliched as it may sound, this man was once a little boy … he had a family, a wife, children of his own. Aside from this drastic action which literally changed the course of history, he was a normal man, if a bit of a jerk. And surprisingly, he was only 24 when he killed Kennedy. Which make his actions seem all the more able to be chalked up to the stupid risks we take when consumed with the restlessness of youth.

Writer David M. Korn goes to great lengths to make sure that ever detail of Oswald’s life is presented to us so that we can make a decision about him based on more than just the actions of his last few days. Whether it’s to deepen the notion of Oswald’s humanity or to underscore that Lee was, in fact, a violent man tortured by his own feelings of insecurity is up to the audience to decide … because the play is written more as a series of facts than as a full on drama.

This style serves the play well early on when Lee (Nick Scoullar) is young and Korn needs to quickly get through setting up the dysfunctional family of older brother Robert (Stephen Graham) and overbearing, vain, pushy, thoughtless, selfish mother  Marguerite (Vivian  Neuwirth). The trio, san father, never feels grounded … and this notion is carried out through the swift and precise blocking which has the family moving boxes, chairs and other raw forms of scenery that invoke both the Book Depository as well as the transitory feeling of never being settled down. At times, however, the cast moves so often (punctuating every sentence, for instance, with a clunk of the furniture ) that it’s almost like watching a strange game of Musical Chairs.

When Lee meets Marina (Monika  Hunken ) the story actually shifts and becomes less of a “here’s the history of the man who killed JFK” and more of a traditional (though no less fascinating) story about a marriage. At first blissful, the pair (who met while Lee had defected to the Soviet Union) fit together in a necessary way; they both fill a specific need for each other which makes them desperately in love. However, circumstance change when the Oswalds move back to America. Lee is dissatisfied with his life and uses all the textbook abusive methods of keeping his wife under his thumb: he keeps her isolated from other Russian-speaking people when she becomes too friendly with them, he does not encourage her to learn English, he beats her, her verbally abuses her and tells her to ‘go back to Russia’. More than once Marina is in such a state of despair that she thinks of suicide. And yet, like many co-dependant couples who both seem to need this ritual of abuse, separation, reunion, repeat, they do this over and over again. The results are bruises, separate apartments, and two children.

It’s here where the writing style seems to act as a barrier between the characters and the audience. By having the Marina and Lee look directly at each other, yet still narrate (for the audience’s behalf) lines about their relationship is a little off putting, thought it does keep Oswald in an isolated state which reinforces the idea of his loner-like personality despite wife and children.

Obviously we all know how Lee Harvey Oswald’s story — or rather, how his life — ended. How his story ended is with those who loved him the best way they could having to deal with what he had done. While his mother insisted that Lee was a secret agent –he’d died for his country and should be buried in Arlington National Cemetery– Marina and Robert are more realistic about what happened, and what their lives are now destined to be.

While you don’t come away from Acting Alone feeling sorry for Lee Harvey Oswald, you do come away from the play with a richer history of who this man was, how he became that way, and who he started hurting long before he fired that fatal shot.

–

Acting  Alone

November  5  through November  21 2009

Wednesday  through  Friday  at  8:00  pm

and  Saturday  2:00  pm  and  8:00  pm

The  ArcLight  Theatre  (152  West  71st  Street)

Tickets  are  $18  and  available

on‐line  at www.smarttix.com  or  by  calling  (212)  868‐4444.

“The Oath” Will Have You Testifying

“The Oath” Will Have You Testifying

Karen Tortora-Lee — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:37:59 +0000

Take The Oath

Take a preacher looking for a flock, a flock looking for a preacher, one “Good” sister, one “Bad” sister, a snooty churchwoman trying to bring down a house of cards and a housekeeper who’d give Alice a run for her money, set it all in the dry, hot Dust Bowl of Depression-Era Florida and you’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of Jacqueline Goldfinger’s magnificent The Oath, directed by Cristina Alicea and currently running at The Arclight Theater till May 10th.

Before the play even starts, sound designer Martha Goode and scenic designer Blair Mielnik do an amazing job of settling you into the time period as well as the underlying good ole Christian spirit by playing songs like I’ll Fly Away while you get to study the beautifully detailed and marvelously evocative set design which gets it perfect, right down to the old icebox and wooden framed forced perspective hallway.

Set Design for The Oath

When we first meet the wild-child Cebe Tate (Louise Flory) she’s still in her dress from the night before, doing what amounts to an early morning walk of shame if this girl had any shame; (as she proclaims to Deck [Dianna Martin], the family housekeeper that while she hasn’t been to bed yet, “I been in somebody’s bed …”) and itching to tell her older sister Ophelia (Sarah Chaney) about the “Birmingham Boy”, Joshua (Anthony Crep) who’s been preaching around town. From the looks of it, these three woman have been avoiding the sad truth that the wonderful Reverend Tate who has “abandoned the pettiness of everyday life” but “does not wish to abandon his flock” is really propped up in the back room, barely clinging to life.

While Cebe goes tearing around town, messing with the wrong boys, drinking till all hours of the night, and dragging the good Tate name through the mud, Ofah stays inside, speaking for her father, tending to church duties, and trying to keep Mrs. Lecroix’s (Robin Madel) snooping nose far away from the mysterious back bedroom. As wife of the man who runs the church board, Mrs. Lecroix has been using every opportunity to try and drive the sisters out of the house (paid for by the church) and into the streets. Which is why Joshua is such a blessing to them all; if Ofah can convince him to take over her father’s flock, while keeping his mouth shut about everything else, she could save the family’s reputation, their shelter, and their existence. As these four become entwined in the story their layers are stripped away … Cebe isn’t the one-note town whore she’d have us believe she is, and Ofah isn’t the stoic, conniving dictator she presents herself as either. Eventually everyone’s secret, including Deck’s comes to light, and we see how far each person will go to protect their own personal Oath.

Joshua preaches to the congregation

Director Cristina Alicea does an amazing job bringing Jaqueline Goldfinger’s soulful characters to life; her use of the audience as congregation members is particularly effective. When Joshua addresses the dark theatre and preaches he is so impassioned that when he spoke “Grasp your neighbor’s hand … and feel their life in your hands and your life in theirs, of one body and one blood” it was all I could do to not reach out and grab my own husband’s hand, so caught up in his preaching was I (and, from what I could tell, the rest of the audience).

There is a similar moment echoed later in the play, when Cebe addresses the audience, but her sermon is much more personal, and much more heartbreaking; for all her attitude she’s desperately trying to find out who she is and what she’s meant to do. She is not so much speaking God’s word as questioning everyone’s interpretation of it. Unlike her sister Ofah, who works with the church, Cebe works with the ministry … she gets right down in there into the lives of the people, going to where they are, living their lives as they do, speaking their language. Very much like the archetypal hooker-with-the-heart-of-gold, we come to see that under all that flirting, giggling and fawning Cebe understands her father’s work perhaps more than her sister does. Similarly, under Ophelia’s straight posture, cool gaze and pinched smile there is a need to just set it all down for a moment and be human. And between these two woman, Deck and Joshua play the fulcrum, always balancing these two out so that the message doesn’t get lost in the business of it all.

Eventually they all do get it right, or as right as circumstance will allow them to … not so much a happy ending as a satisfying one where those who were on the wrong path find the right one, those who took a detour from the path get back on it, and those praying for rain finally understand that, like all things, it will come when the time is right.

THE OATH – running till May 10th at the ArcLight Theatre (152 West 71st Street New York, NY 10023)

Ticket Price: $18.00; $15.00 Students & Seniors For tickets call: 212-352-3101 or click here.

The Happiest Medium » The Arclight Theater

Is Anyone Ever “Acting Alone”?

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