Theatre in Review: Pool (No Water) (OYL Theater Company/Barrow Street Theatre)

	Maja Wampuszyc, Nick Flint, Estelle Bajou, Richard Saudek. Photo: Russ Rowland

The good news about Pool (No Water) is that it's an opportunity to catch up with the clearly gifted members of OYL Theater Company. The acronym in their name stands for "one year lease," but something tells me they're going to be around for much longer than that. The less good news is that they're performing Pool (No Water), a rather affected piece about art and envy by Mark Ravenhill. Advertised as being visceral and shocking, it moves swiftly over the course of 60 minutes without ever attaining either quality.

OYL is devoted to the idea of "collective storytelling" and Pool (No Water) is narrated by the members of the five-person cast. They constitute a group of artists who have lived and made work together, supporting each other through thick (rarely) and thin (mostly). They seem genuinely serious, although there is something a shade too self-adoring about the way they describe their collective struggle and their charity work on behalf of, for example, "heroin babies."

As the play begins, they are mightily upset because one member of the group -- she is nameless; the only two characters in the piece with names are dead -- has enjoyed a breakout success and moved to the West Coast. I would be put out, too, since she apparently got the attention of the world making installations out of the leavings of a friend who died of AIDS, using "Ray's blood and bandages and catheter and condoms." But matters of exploitation are not under discussion; indeed, one gets the impression that each of them is upset that he or she didn't think of it first. Illogically, they feel that their friend's success has upset the natural order of things: "None of us was meant to be wealthy," somebody says. They even blame her newly wealthy state for the death of Sally, another member of the group.

Each of them is obsessed with their well-off friend's swimming pool, which somehow seems to symbolize everything she has and they don't. But things are dramatically reversed when she invites them out to stay with her, and, leading the way into a nighttime swim, plunges into an empty pool. (The pool boy forgot to tell her he had drained it.) The only sound is "the harsh crack of her body against the concrete." As she is rushed to the hospital, everyone puts on their best sorrowing face; one of them remembers "the little tear down the cheek, just like we know we should." But they are artists, and, by extension, according to Ravenhill, they are also vultures: It's not long before the poor woman becomes to them an aesthetic object. "The purple of the bruise," one of them says. "It appeals. It tempts." Another says they "were moved by the intense beauty of that image." Of course, they "were already thinking exhibitions, contracts."

And so they begin documenting the state of her body with photographs, day by day, envisioning an installation that traces the changes wrought to her body. Images of acclaim float in their collective mind until the patient starts to get better and take charge of the project. Driven by rage and envy -- not to mention the drug addiction that seems to afflict them all -- they finally destroy every last bit of evidence of the planned art project. Even this act fails to satisfy: In a confrontation with their outraged friend, they are forced to face, apparently for the first time ever, that they may not be who they think they are.

If told in more vivid detail and perhaps assigned to a single character, there might be the basis for a powerful monologue here. When distributed among five actors who are moving around the stage in patterns choreographed by Natalie Lomonte, this rather gothic tale of hothouse jealousy loses whatever force it might have attained. One frustrated artist makes for a tragedy; five of them constitute a chorus line. Much of the time, they make use of the white benches supplied by the set designer, James Hunting; in one especially striking image, people and benches are layered on top of each other. Yet all this activity has the effect of distancing us from what is supposed to be a brutal tale, anesthetizing the author's words.

With its brief running time and plentiful twists, Pool (No Water) is never boring, and the cast -- Estelle Bajou, Eric Berryman, Nick Flint, Richard Saudek, and Maja Wampuszyc -- are a pleasure to be with, even if the script doesn't allow any one of them to stand out from the others. Ianthe Demos, the director, seems to handle them well enough -- although the scenes of drug-fueled freak-outs look more aerobic than decadent. Mike Riggs' lighting, Kenisha Kelly's costumes, and Scott J. Fetterman's video and sound are all reasonably accomplished, although I don't understand why many of the projections are shown on dark curtains, making them barely distinguishable.

Thanks to the attractive cast, Pool (No Water) is a painless experience, but clearly that wasn't the intention. At the end of the piece, each member of the cast comes to understand that he or she is not that special. Funny; I could have told them that much earlier.--David Barbour