Review: Gidion's Knot by Capital T Theatre
by Michael Meigs
The setting at the Salvage Vanguard's black box is that of a fifth-grade classroom. In contrast to those of many other FronteraFest presentations in this space, the room seems spacious. A long greenboard runs across the rear. Those two rows of school desks have lots of room between them. Bright images and posters carry optimistic slogans. The kids are gone -- the kids are gone at every moment in this piece, both physically and in a spiritual sense -- and teacher Heather is sitting at her desk, preoccupied.
Director Lily Wolff and the two actresses in Gidion's Knot take all that space and vacancy, and over the course of 90 minutes they compress the airy elementary school room into the emotional equivalent of a claustrophobic cage match with no holds barred.
A knock sounds. Corryn, curt but courteous, is looking for the place of a parent-teacher meeting. Heather sends her to the office.
Corryn comes back.
This is the place. Gidion's mother is reporting for a conference on Monday as requested. Even though something horrible happened to Gidion on Friday.
Corryn is verbal and insistent but her eyes are empty. Tremendous energy is locked down within her restless frame. Heather the teacher is confused: "The principal should be here." Corryn, indifferent, agrees. Heather steps out to notify the office and returns. They wait. They speak. Corryn pushes; Heather avoids explaining the reason that she suspended Gidion for five days and sent home a note insisting on this Monday meeting.
Emily Erington as the mother has something vibrant, kinetic, about her -- kinetic both in the ordinary meaning of the word and in the meaning used by the military for its weapons systems: focused, destructive, swift and violent. The suspense in the first half of the piece is two-fold: What happened to Gidion? and When is this woman going to explode?
Rebecca Robinson as the teacher is equally devastated but turned inward. She was facing the caretaker's dilemma: how to protect these pupils from one another and how to protect them from themselves. Violent thoughts and vile imaginings arose last week, too overwhelming for her to deal with.
What are these characters' respective responsibilities for these horrors, both for the fantasies and for the psychic and physical violence that then occurred?
Director Wolff reduces the distance between the two women over the course of their uncomfortable discussion, and for the strongest moments of the action she brings them straight forward to us, within inches of the front row. They're situated there for the harrowing reading of a long, phantasmagorical story written by the child -- one that puts us in an almost hypnotic trance as we seek for for signs of the ravaging of those two hearts.
This script with its deep conflicts, opposed views of childhood and carefully paced racheting up of suspense provides a platform for virtuoso acting. Wolff, Robinson and Erington make the most of it. You'll certainly hear wow'd comments about "great acting!"
Erington as the mother initially attracts our attention and empathy, all the more because she, the initiator, is verbal and frank. Revelations about Robinson as the teacher and about precedent events then open our eyes and pull at our sympathies. Emotions on both sides are deep and forceful.
Hovering behind this one-on-one pounding is the awful and apparently unsoluble question of how either of them could have forestalled catastrophe. That's an unanswered question, for neither really addresses it. The playwright provides an equally unresolved metaphor in the title, Gidion's Knot: in case we miss it, there's a poster behind the teacher's desk illustrating the myth of the Gordion knot.
Challenged by the Phrygians in Gordium to untangle the epic knot that symbolized their kingdom, Alexander the Great unsheathed his sword and sliced it in two.
In contrast, Gidion's Knot, signifying the agonies of hyperactive adolescence, concentrates on the consequences that visit those who fumbled with that knot and failed.
Gidion's Knot
by Johnna Adams
Capital T Theatre
Gidion's Knot is staged four times for FronteraFest (January 20 and 24, February 1 and 2) and four more times as a Capital T production, February 5 - 8 in the same venue (tickets here).
