12/19/2023 0 Comments 4 push ups or shot jengaThat’s the picture - once we’ve reassembled it, and if we can trust our protagonist. “I have been acting all of my life!” she tells Flora. When we meet her, it’s 1985, “that motherfucker” is freshly deceased, and Meryl’s bags are packed for Hollywood, where she intends to become a 75-year-old movie star. Williams for his little play,” she sighs.) Her daughter, Flora (Kristen Sieh), grew up to be an addict, jobless and dependent on her, as Meryl endured years of beatings from Stanley. In 1928, already pregnant, she married another abuser, “a man of Polish descent named Stanley Kowalski.” (“I have no idea who’s responsible for feeding the details of my life to Mr. “Mother left Father for a man with more money and a job in Wisconsin.” That man, Meryl’s stepfather, raped her, and neither her mother nor her stepsister, Charlize (Johanna Day), would or could acknowledge the abuse. She is Meryl Kowalski, and a version of her story, with its pieces put back in order, might go like this: She was born in 1910 in Los Angeles to a father who loved her and a mother who didn’t much. She’s coiffed and made-up, aware she’s on-camera - but when a voice-over tells her, “Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart,” there’s a flickering blankness in her expression that might be simple confusion, or animal panic, or total fugue state. Scene Partners begins with a towering video of her face on the collection of LED screens that open and shut like a camera aperture across the front of Riccardo Hernández’s set. As a performer, she’s the queen of that disconcerting middle place: Is she demure and artless, or is she going to cut you? She’s never overtly menacing, but she keeps you on edge. If the experience isn’t always fully rewarding, it’s consistently intriguing.Īnd, in Dianne Wiest, Caswell has found a spookily appropriate muse. Still, Caswell’s ambition is palpable, and we do get curiouser and curiouser. Its tone remains a bit distant, its pace a few clicks under what seems like the natural biorhythm of the play. Under the cool direction of Rachel Chavkin, the production never feels quite as extreme as it might. While there’s much fragmentation in Scene Partners, I wish it led to more breathtaking coalescence. So, deconstruction, ho! For Caswell, trauma shatters and scatters identity, and in response, his stage becomes both kaleidoscope and autostereogram: It can fracture narratives - reconfiguring their pieces with each turn of the apparatus - and then, if we’re able to adjust our vision, it can suddenly show us a pristine image springing from the chaos. He’s aggressively searching for new dramatic shapes: “ terrified that this business we call show rests precariously upon the crumbling foundation of yesteryear,” says one of Scene Partners’ characters. Plenty of contemporary playwrights are interested in theatricalizing the effects of trauma, and Caswell is one of them - but he’s also clearly wary of the solemn, sentimental swamp that road can lead to. Five minutes after that: … wait is it? (Like I said: helpful.) Then, ten minutes later: JK it IS all real. If you happen to be someone who takes notes during plays for a living, you might find yourself writing down helpful observations such as: Okay so none of it’s real. Its reality is fragmented, tessellated, constantly re-creating itself - it’s a house of interlocking, perspective-defying staircases, a dream hallway where it’s impossible to tell which way is up. Escher painting for the stage, you might end up with something like John J.
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