Theatre in Review: Lift (59E59)Walter Mosley is one of the finest crime novelists writing in America today; if you have never picked up his Easy Rawlins series, I advise you to do so immediately. In fact, the term "crime novelist" is something of a misnomer, because his books stand on their own for their vividly rendered atmosphere and distinctive characters. Let's just call him a great novelist and leave it at that. However, with Lift, Mosley joins the long and distinguished line of prose stylists whose gifts prove less than useful when applied to the theatre. This attempted suspense drama offers a not-uninteresting premise but it shows many hallmarks of the tyro playwright, not least a willingness to talk off the audience's collective ear. Lift takes place almost entirely inside an elevator of a New York law firm. It is occupied by Tina Pardon and Theodore Southmore, employees of the company, both of whom are black. Almost immediately, there is an explosion and the car falls many stories, ending up hanging by a single fraying cable. It quickly becomes apparent that the building has been attacked by terrorist bombers; Tina and Theodore are only two of the many who are trapped. However, because of damage to the building's structure, it will be some time before a rescue crew can arrive. So, to kill time, Theodore starts quizzing Tina about her date for the weekend -- He overheard her in conversation with a friend -- which quickly turns into an argument about her apparent preference for white men. I don't know about you, but if my life was hanging by a thread, my first instinct would not be to quiz my partner in danger about her dating habits. Tina takes the same view, and for a while, the conversation in that elevator is pretty spiky. Then Theodore starts having increasingly painful seizures, which he describes to Tina as being a form of colitis. Don't you believe it: Once the truth is out, both of them start baring their histories, which include drug addiction, child abuse, homicide, and prostitution. The sheer overload of secrets is almost risible, not to mention the characters' willingness to overshare while in mortal peril. The idea, I suppose, is to show that Tina and Theodore have had to conceal their real selves to travel in white corridors of power. All I can say is, having spent some time with them, I feel somebody should have a few sharp words with the human resources department at their firm. Adding to the melodrama is a chorus of offstage voices belonging to people trapped in other elevators. In one, a man is dying of heart trouble and his wife begs for help; she finally denounces her fellow victims for not helping her. Since everyone is trapped in an elevator presumably without a defibrillator, it's hard to imagine what anyone could do, but it is indicative of the author's fondness for melodramatic carrying on. There's also something distasteful about Mosley's willingness to exploit a 9/11-style situation for his purposes. Certainly, the direction of Marshall Jones, III does little to smooth over the script's cruder aspects. But MaameYaa Boafo, as Tina, and Biko Eisen-Martin, as Theodore, work hard and occasionally manage to give their flimsy characters some plausibility. He makes his perilous physical condition seem thoroughly alarming and she does remarkably well with a monologue explaining how she went from a sheltered childhood to taking a long walk on the wild side. I'd be happy to see each of them again, under happier circumstances. The set, by Andrei Onegin, doesn't really have the photorealistic quality that is needed, but the projections, by Rocco DiSanti, help to create the impression of a building under extreme stress. DiSanti's lighting distractingly includes a small rig inside the elevator, but he creates some impressive looks when Theodore climbs up on top of the car to survey the situation. The sound design, by Toussaint Hunt, combines some extremely eerie cues related to the explosion with notably ill-chosen musical sequences to bridge the scenes. Anne E. Grosz's costumes are perfectly fine. Lift does end on a shockingly effective note, thanks to sound and projection cues, but this is a thoroughly unsatisfying experience, featuring unconvincing characters gabbing their way through a thoroughly manufactured situation. Mosley's prose mysteries are fully formed works of literary art, but this little playwriting exercise is strictly pulp fiction.--David Barbour 
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