Review: Bethany by Theatre en Bloc
by David Glen Robinson
Theatre en Bloc has opened Bethany by Laura Marks. The play offers themes of diverse social problems and trends, including homelessness, unemployment, housing decline, the fraudulent inspirational management industry, urban decay, and government bungling. All these are thrown together in an intriguing, plot-heavy contemporary play that could be happening in Round Rock, Detroit, or down the block as we speak. Jenny Lavery directs. Theatre en Bloc is to be applauded for its excellent choice of a serious contemporary play and its sterling production of same.
Bethany is about two desperate people who meet as they inhabit the same empty, abandoned suburban house. The utilities remain on until the end of the month. So maybe they can crank their agendas and get some rest until then—if their inner demons will allow it.
While Gary (played by Derek Kolluri) is attired as a homeless person and knows all the survival tricks of the trade, he seems oddly not to be hustling Crystal (played by Lara Wright) for all he can get (word from the street: Austin police, firemen, and EMS refer to homeless as “feral humans”). Is it any wonder that to the homeless all skills are survival skills? Something drove Gary, but what? Gary’s homeless-but-not-homeless character created a vast mystery that carried through to the end of the play and into the talkback session after the play the night this reviewer attended.
Crystal’s motivations are revealed slowly, through her struggles with housing and employment at an auto dealership. She wrestles with her secret needs and the fear that comes with her vulnerability. Ms Wright conveys the wide range of Crystal’s emotions with chameleonlike washes of emotional color across her face and gestures. These states don’t always match the spoken lines, by intent, and the separation adds levels to the character of Crystal. Nowhere is this played better than when she makes a quicksilver, unspoken decision and beckons Patricia (Johanna Whitmore) back into the showroom in what is a pivot, one of many in the story. Watch for the moment; it’s delicious.
Rick Smith plays Charlie, who begins the play looking into the mirror, downstage at the audience, and rehearsing his lines. He gives motivational speeches because he wants to give you the five keys to “success.” This success is simply greed justified, and Charlie doesn’t have the honesty to admit he lives in a metaphoric van down by the river. His character is one of the plot drivers of the story. Smith, fresh from his role as Oscar in The Odd Couple at City Theatre, embraces the role of Charlie to give it a creepy reality. The only reality creepier than Charlie is the reality that real motivational speakers sell their greed to CEOs, managers, sales people, professionals, insurance agents, and the gullible willing to pay. In the play, Charlie is seeking to transcend himself. He is one, who, as everyone has always suspected of motivational speakers, has turned his knowledge of motivational techniques toward sexual conquest, greed of another kind. He meets Crystal at the car dealership, where she has been given a deadline to make major sales.
The problem with posting a review of an intriguing, thought-provoking, funny and visually beautiful play during its run is that it risks revealing and spoiling for ticket buyers the many surprises that pop out of the story. This is the case with the best plays, including Bethany. The set design by W.T. Bryant is complex and articulating in unexpected, surprising ways, and its important work is facilitated every night by the magical technical production of the gandalfian Blake Addison. Of special note is that these technicians have not left out the aesthetics: the set is beautiful in all its phases. Although his name is misspelled on the program, Joseph Garlock choreographed the violent scenes in the play to begin subtly and end with people and things mushed thoroughly. This is an arc of fighting difficult to achieve, but Garlock makes it look very easy and very painful.
The gems given to us by this production are many, and we cannot ignore the performance of Martina Ohlhauser, who plays the red-haired Shannon, Crystal’s unyielding supervisor at the dealership. In three or four short scenes, Ms Ohlhauser (with Director Lavery of course) created a living and vibrant character, plucked from the sterile and soulless world of management. Think of a frustrated Alyson Hannigan who didn’t get to go to band camp.
Jeannette Hill and Johanna Whitmore do lapidary work in their supporting roles, Hill as a government agency worker, and Whitmore as an inquisitive visitor to the car dealership. Each of their characters turns the plot in their own ways. Altogether, Bethany as produced by Theatre en Bloc is superbly cast.
Bethany introduces its themes through story and plot, unlike many modern plays. One of the beneficial effects of this is that the pace is rapid and never seems to drag. At the same, the play refuses to ladle its themes into the audience’s lap, preferring to allow audiences to think and talk about Bethany afterward. Two of the town’s other must-see plays have both closed; now Bethany can fill the slot.
Bethany
by Laura Marks
Theatre en Bloc
EVENINGS | 8 PM: May 29 - June 1 + June 5th - June 7th
MATINEES | 3 PM: May 31, June 1+ June 7th
RUNNING TIME 90 Minutes
