Sunday, May 04, 2008
A+E, Theater, Reviews

Parallel lines

Dual perspectives blur ‘Solitude,’ ‘Isabel’

CREDIT: John Nowak
Isma’il Ibn Conner and Del Hamilton in “In the Solitude of Corn Fields”

“IN THE SOLITUDE OF COTTON FIELDS”
7 Stages
$12.50-$25
404-523-7647
www.7stages.org
Through May 17

“EXPECTING ISABEL”
Synchronicity Performance Group
7 Stages
$12.30-$23.10
404-484-8638
www.synchrotheatre.com
Through May 18

BY BERT OSBORNE

There are these two impenetrable, temporarily juxtaposed zeros, see, whose movements void each other out—or whose inertia compels them to approach one another, depending on which of them is telling it. One feels like a mindless, run-over dog; the other avoids elevators as dogs avoid water. One’s glance of intention could muddy a clear mountain stream; the other spits on generalities and bemoans the absence of rarity. They are by turns lightness and darkness, humility and arrogance, desire and injustice, merchant and customer.
 
Needless to say, there’s a strangeness mixed into their nature, as grapes into wine. Encircling an empty stage, or meeting in the middle to slow dance, they wax abstract about melancholy virgins and eccentric marauders, wounded dignity and exhausted hope, the commitment to sell and the promise to buy, about children accepting their prison bars and mysteries that flow like excrement. “Have you said nothing that I might not have heard?” one circuitously wonders. “I’m like the foreigner who can’t understand the language,” the other replies.
 
If you can’t understand a damn word you’ve just read, either, welcome to 7 Stages and its latest avant-garde curiosity, “In the Solitude of Cotton Fields” (by French dramatist Bernard-Marie Koltes). Perhaps the theater’s press release would help: It describes the play as being about “two aspects of one entity … a journey of deals, both profane and sacred, of desires that must be discovered and satisfied.” OK, perhaps not. Whatever the case, according to the program notes, it’s set on a deserted city street and involves an interracial encounter that occurs “within the space of a second”—and then proceeds over 90 intermission-less minutes.
 
The stark production is based on an original translation by Atlanta actor and writer Isma’il Ibn Conner, who appears opposite 7 Stages artistic director Del Hamilton, under the direction of Frenchman Eric Vigner. (During the next 10 years, the company will develop and produce new adaptations of several Koltes plays, in collaboration with theater artists from across Europe.) Koltes might call them the sellers and we in the audience the buyers. To use his own terminology, “The seller’s duty is saying what the buyer wants to hear.” But too much of “Solitude” sounds like he’s dealing in an excess of “hidden merchandise.”
 
Meanwhile, in 7 Stages’ studio space, Synchronicity Performance Group artistic director Rachel May’s “Expecting Isabel” (by Lisa Loomer) chronicles the highs and lows of a Manhattan couple who are running out of time in their plans for parenthood. The play covers familiar territory—infertility, surrogacy, adoption—pleasantly, if not profoundly. (Even its most inventive sequence, a choreographed stroller routine, recalls that dance of the lawnmowers in the movie “She’s Having a Baby.”)
 
The first act is told from the viewpoint of the wife, a writer of greeting cards. The second is narrated by the husband, a sculptor. Oddly, despite the feminine sensibility of a show written and directed by women, it’s his side of the story that seems stronger and more textured, based on the respectively dull and passionate work of costars Stacy Melich and Daniel Triandiflou. Both of them portray the cutesiness of the material well—dig the sudden shifts in Katie McCreary’s lighting every time they deliver a private facial expression or one-line aside to the crowd—but the most honest and touching moments belong to him. (At least for me; women could relate to the characters differently.)

As various stereotypical relatives, divorced marriage counselors, cynical support-group members and baby mamas, Suehyla El-Attar, Tiffany Morgan and Maria Sager shine among the supporting cast.
 
Where the 7 Stages show is akin to gorging on who knows what French delicacy, Synchronicity’s is like being spoon-fed whatever that mush is in a Gerber’s jar. Pass the meat and potatoes. SP

Posted by Christian Baggett on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 at 4:21 PM:

Bert! It looks like SP gave you some more space. Those reviews intrigued me enough to want to go out and see those shows..neither cheerleading nor "vitriolic." Nice work...really.

Posted by Bert Osborne on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 at 6:10 PM:

Thanks, Christian. That’s the ULTIMATE compliment for a critic – to know he can write about a couple of plays he had some problems with, but to do so in a way that leaves it up to readers to decide whether the shows sound like something they’d want to check out for themselves. (Evidently, sometimes I’m more successful at that than others!)

My weekly space is still what it is – “650 words tops!” – but it does make a difference writing about two productions this week compared to five last week. If I’ve learned anything from these recent exchanges, it’s that it’s incumbent only upon me not to bite off any more than I can comfortably chew in any given column . . .