Kevin Mannering and Matthew Michael Hurley (Photographer: Alona Fogel)

Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me? Wait a minute now – what? Just what is Danny Mitarotondo’s new play, What the Sparrow Said, at CSV Latea, trying to say? Or is it really trying not to say anything? The language has certainly been put through a crafty shredder, stripping it of any natural clarity, eliptically hinting that there is more going on than is apparent, morphing into indigestible poetry, and flashily playing at nonsense while preventing any speaker from actually finishing a sentence. The actors rattle off their lines as if they were in some over-paced 1930s screwball comedy, overlapping sentences in a manner that defies clear communication and challenges listener comprehension. Strain as you will to grasp what is being said, it is all but hopeless. And when this difficulty is pointedly compounded by the decision to stage separate scenes on top of one another, and having characters in different scenes talking simultaneously so that your attention is split in the rising din, and you are forced to abandon at least one set of exchanges… well; really? Yeah, I get life can be confusing; chaotic even. Yes, and life can be annoying. Very annoying. Verisimilitude, however, is definitely not a part of this playwright’s vocabulary. Absurdism? Perhaps.

The story begins at the LA hospital bedside of an elderly dying woman, Hannah. Her two sons, have for reasons undeclared, drifted apart over the years. One, Danny, presently lives in New York. The other, Blaze, is by her side; but is he present?  Blaze, a high-strung poetic type, seems incapable of confronting the fact of his mother’s imminent demise. He prattles on noisily about the small glorious minutiae of living, desperately eluding the matter to hand. Yes, he’s in denial. Yes, he’s annoying. He even turns off the audio monitor at his mother’s bed as he can’t stand the electric tone of her fading heartbeat. And when a young female visitor enters the ward to see another patient, he begins a frenetic courtship with her. Meantime, upstage, we are introduced to Danny, who has just inherited, to his great surprise, a Park Avenue apartment from someone he considered merely a passing acquaintance. Cynthia, the estate agent cum executrix, who possibly could be a sibling of the deceased, is gamefully making a play for him. Danny has newly broken up with his girlfriend, Kristen. There is a rapid-fire exchange between Cynthia and himself where he addresses her – is it confusedly? -as Kristen, and she even seems to change into her for the course of a galloping verse of poetry. Blaze’s seduction scene in the background meantime is continuing apace, and the separate scenes begin to vie for our attention. Not only are both situations intentionally unlikely, but the doctored language undertakes to unpick any emotional realism that might emerge, even as the big poignant themes of love and death are being dramatized. We are not prompted to care about any of these people. Danny leaves Cynthia. The old woman dies. Should it matter if Blaze may indirectly have contributed to his mother’s death by disengaging the monitor? Or that Cynthia is left bereft, weeping wretchedly in the foreground following Danny’s exit? The scene shifts.

Danny now is traveling across country to LA to attend his mother’s funeral. Enroute he meets several enigmatic women who speak obliquely about matters inconclusive. These roles are played by actresses from the earlier scenes, emphasizing the interchangeability of the characters life throws at us, or relates us to. Is that Cynthia behind those dark glasses, obfuscating about her connection with a brother? Could there be some portion of his mother  in that eccentric lady Danny gives a ride to and who guides him to a cemetery? Every encounter is pregnant but undelivered. When Danny at last arrives in LA and meets Blaze for lunch at  a restaurant from their past, the play finally comes a cropper. Blaze is behaving like an unhinged person. Is he schizophrenic, or merely speaking in the play’s poetic babble? As psychological realism has been jettisoned quite a while back it is impossible to know. Following a heated exchange, amped up by Blaze’s urgent provocations, and a tussle, we are treated to a vision of both brothers, broken men, in a palpating embrace of desperation. Danny’s words wither in his mouth as he pleads for anyone to help them, and darkness swallows them. Well excuse me; you cannot at last storm the heartstrings in a closing act unless you have first successfully plucked them in the course of the story. Or on another note, darkly absurd, is this final scene an intentional act of  bathos?

There is no denying that Mitarotondo has devised an ingenious theatrical language here. The poetry does not work for me, but the eliptical exchanges have acuity and a comic vigor. The structural complexity is intriguing, as is his investigation of, shall we say, the relativity of relativity. There is much allusion to fracturing, fractals and refraction. Linguistically and formally the work integrates this interest, but it is at once itself refractive and refractory. The specter of an intensive workshop hangs over it, but perhaps it is not fully cooked. The actors must all work hard to put it across and there is a problem with vocal projection in some instances. Standouts are Brenda Currin as Hannah (a non-speaking role!) and as an eccentric fellow traveller, and Heather Oakley as Cynthia, who brings a welcome touch of neurotic comedy to the proceedings. Ambitious the work certainly is on the part of the director (Jenna Worsham) and the author, and that’s to be commended in this serious-minded production company. But perhaps the general problem with the show is endemic in the enterprise’s title, which most incongruously is The Common Tongue. Nothing could be less applicable to the production’s style. Regrettably it’s an unworkable mix of the intellectual and the emotional. It’s a cocktail that just won’t hunt.

What The Sparrow Said ran until August 26, 2011 as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.
~~~

What The Sparrow Said

Writer: Danny Mitarotondo
Director: Jenna Worsham

1h 30m
VENUE #4: Teatro LATEA

Related Posts:

• Interview With The Four Writers Of Connect Five

Four writers plus one audience equals Connect Five – The Common Tongue’s evening of one-act plays which will be going on from January 5 – 16 at The Ars Nova Building.  The night brings together two emerging playwrights – Danny Mitarotondo (recipient of the Edward F. Albee Writing Fellowship) and Bronwen Prosser (Vital Theatre’s The Picasso Project) – with two established playwrights – Wendy MacLeod (Schoolgirl Figure; The House of Yes) and Lucy Thurber (Scarcity; Bottom of the World).

All four writers were kind enough to take a moment out of their busy schedules to do a short Q&A with me before I go to review the show.

Wendy MacLeod

Wendy MacLeod / LAST NIGHT

◊ Juliet tries to do a little something extra in the bedroom for her boyfriend but the morning after finds him full of some ungrateful suspicions. ◊

I’ve been a huge fan of yours since I saw The House of Yes and have been lucky enough to see both stage and screen versions. You are brilliant at bringing the unexpected to life! Last Night sounds like something that will resonate with a lot of people. What’s the most unexpected thing about it?
In this play it’s the guy who is needy, jealous, and pre-menstrual. The woman just wants to get to work.

What drives Last Night more – the theme or the characters?
Characters always drive the play. I’m not a big believer in “theme” because I don’t know what a theme looks like.

What’s your favorite moment in the play?
I think only audience members are entitled to choose favorite moments.

How do you hope audiences will react to the piece?
I hope they will laugh. Then I hope they will recognize themselves in the man or woman or, ideally, both.

What has it been like being part of this night of theatre? What’s been the most rewarding thing working with The Common Tongue?
It’s nice to meet talented young actors and work with eager, hard-working young companies because you never know who will be the NEXT Atlantic or Labyrinth. It’s also nice to have my play in the firm hands of director Karen Kohlhaas.

***

Danny Mitarotondo

Danny Mitarotondo / THE ROOM AND A RICHARD

◊ Strangers Cynthia and Alex, having an ordinary New York exchange over an apartment, suddenly sink into an extraordinary interchange of loss, love, and memory. ◊

What drives THE ROOM AND A RICHARD more – the theme or the characters?
The Room and A Richard is completely driven by the characters (as is, hopefully, every play). Their language, and therefore their intention, literally changes them as they speak it, which changes the plot, the room and (hopefully) us.

What’s your favorite moment in the play?
The whole damn thing.

How do you hope audiences will react to the piece?
I hope that people will immediately feel something in their stomachs that makes them, two days later over a coffee, think.

What has it been like being part of this night of theatre?  What’s been the most rewarding thing working with The Common Tongue?
It’s been amazing. Heather, Blaze and Mo are a dream team and I couldn’t ask for more. Producing the whole evening – standing alongside Broni, Lucy and Wendy as a writer and then Shannon, Katie, Kathleen, Sarah, Lila and Mike … it’s a dream come true. TCT is my family. They inspire me every day to be a better me.

***

Lucy Thurber

Lucy Thurber /YOUNG

◊ Ava just can’t seem to stop hurting the women in her life. Can they forgive her one last time? ◊

What drives Young more – the theme or the characters?
I think actually the characters and the theme are equal in Young. Or the characters are the theme.

What’s your favorite moment in the play?
The end moment between Ava and Timmy. I like seeing friendship that functions like family on stage.

How do you hope audiences will react to the piece?
I hope they laugh a little. Being young is beautiful, agonizing and often funny in it’s intensity.

What has it been like being part of this night of theatre? What’s been the most rewarding thing working with The Common Tongue?
How much The Common Tongue loves true collaboration.

***

Bronwen Prosser

Bronwen Prosser / THE MAKE-OUT QUEEN

◊ A young woman’s fierce and spastic quest for magic through the revolutionary art of kissing. ◊

What drives  THE MAKE-OUT QUEEN more – the theme or the Characters?
The theme: It is the main characters intense desire for magic which in turn creates characters- some more magical than others. But then again the theme doesn’t exit without the character of The Make-Out Queen. She decides to go on this fever-quest in search of magic saliva, ao there is no theme without her very strong personality. So I change my answer: Character. But you can see they are inextricably linked. Because as the playwright I can honestly say the character and the theme emerged right along together. They take turns pulling each other forward.

What’s your favorite moment in the play?
The very top! Because it’s the first moment the audience and I see each other and it’s so insanely unpredictable- and so exciting because it’s the moment we all begin this voyage together. It’s also the most challenging moment for me because it just doesn’t work if I have any preconception of how I want the piece to appear. The actor part of me always gets annoyed with the playwright part of me during rehearsals when I’m working on the opening monologue.

How do you hope audiences will react to the piece?
I hope they will take my call to arms seriously and try kissing someone with a whole renewed energy and awe. I hope they re-commit to the magic. Because it is a conscious choice: re-committing daily to wonder.

What has it been like being part of this night of theatre?
Well, I feel really honored that my company picked my piece. It means more to me than anyone else in the world producing it, and I am in total awe of the other playwrights I’m sharing the stage with. It is such an immense honor to be in a night of theater that includes Wendy McLeod, Lucy Thurber and my Artistic Director Danny Mitarotondo. I am proud and humbled and I want nothing more in the world than to do right by this fabulous night of theater.

What’s been the most rewarding thing working with The Common Tongue?
They are my family. The rewards come abundantly. I do not get to produce work in such a supported personal way- and within a net of friendly arms- anywhere else. The reward is that communication is always kind and honest and keeping the best interest of the company in mind. It’s a challenge and a balance, and it’s very rewarding. And then there’s the sexy rewards: I’m part of a hot young theater company doing really exciting work with some very famous playwrights and some very talented new playwrights and some of New York’s finest actors.

We are dedicated and we love kicking ass.

—
Thanks again, to all the writers who took the time to tell us about their new one-acts.

Related Posts:

• Connect Five – Four Plays With One Thing In Common
• What The Sparrow Said (Fringe Festival 2011)
• Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays – Before And After “I Do”
• It’s A Family Thing At “The House Of Yes”