Sometimes,
when you use the word “interesting’ to describe a show, it can be because
you’re hiding how you really feel. More than once, I have left a particularly
disheartening production and been asked what I thought. “Interesting,” I’d
mumble, avoiding the string of expletives I could have easily deployed.
However,
in the case of Well by Lisa Kron, now
at Ensemble Theatre, it seems that interesting is the very best word to
describe this superbly performed, intriguingly constructed piece of theater.
And although the show seems to be gasping for air by the end of its 95-minute
sprint through a collection of meta-theatrical feints and surprises, it’s a
ride you should definitely experience.
It
all begins very casually as Lara Mielcarek, who plays the playwright Lisa Kron,
welcomes the audience and introduces us to her play and to Laura Starnik, who
plays Lisa’s mother Ann. In doing so, Lisa makes clear that this play, which is
being rehearsed as we sit there, is not about her and her mother. Definitely
not. It’s about a “theatrical exploration of health and wellness and the
integration of Lansing, Michigan.” Yeah, right.
With
mom plopped in a La-Z-Boy for most of the show, Lisa and Ann interact with four
other performers who play various characters from the Kron history. These
include the Kron’s black next-door neighbors, a black girl who bullied Lisa in
grade school, and folks Lisa met when she was an in-patient at an allergy
treatment facility. The actors often morph into and out of character as they
respond to Lisa’s directions, ending one scene and picking up on another with
interludes of side conversations with mom.
Lisa
Kron is a renowned playwright (Fun Home)
and actor, and she knows how to put interesting words in the mouths of people
who wander about on stage. And for the first 70 minutes of this play, it all
works so wonderfully, under the deft touch of director Celeste Cosentino, that
the whole enterprise feels almost giddy with invention and surprise.
This
is aided in no small part by the engaging and amusing performance of Mielcarek,
whose friendly demeanor as Lisa at the start is quickly peeled away to reveal a
woman who is haunted and depressed by her mother’s history of various
illnesses. These are physical issues that Lisa shared until she moved away to
New York City and became healthy, but her mother never seemed to recover her
health.
And
Starnik, either slumped in her chair or padding softly and slowly around the
set, quietly establishes Ann as a force of nature in a robe and scuffs, winning
over the audience with her deadpan asides. Ann was a mover in her Lansing
neighborhood, advocating for integration, and this mission comes across
clearly. She is also a mess of free-floating symptoms that keep her
chair-bound.
These
two are ably supported by the other actors who take on multiple roles. Maya
Jones is fierce and hilarious as Lisa’s playground tormentor Lori Jones, and Brian
Kenneth Armour gives precise interpretations as both Big Oscar and Little
Oscar, the drunk father and his son who live next to the Kron’s. In the allergy
ward, April Needham demonstrates the agony of severe allergic reactions as Joy
and Craig Joseph is the officious head nurse. And they all neatly register the
confusion of being both actors and characters in Lisa Kron’s meta-exercise that
attempts to answer a question that is unanswerable: Why do some people stay
sick while other get well?
Even
though the wind goes out of these billowing theatrical sails in the last 20
minutes, with a long story about Lisa’s Halloween misadventures ending with a shrug and a bit too much repetition of previous conflicts, the play
is mostly an exhilarating excursion. And, you know, it’s really interesting.
Well
Through
October 22 at Ensemble Theatre, 2843 Washington Blvd., Cleveland Heights,
216-321-2930, ensembletheatrecle.org
No comments:
Post a Comment