Theatre in Review: Grief Camp (Atlantic Theater Company)/Becoming Eve (NY Theatre Workshop)It is no small accomplishment to populate a stage filled with grieving young people and then render them almost entirely uninteresting and unsympathetic. But this is the dubious achievement of Grief Camp. Debuting playwright Eliya Smith takes us inside a summer camp for adolescents who have experienced a traumatic loss; such institutions exist and might plausibly provide a basis for drama. Instead, she passes the time with trivialities and bits of eccentric behavior designed to make the characters likable. It's a strategy that backfires badly. Smith's laudable strategy is to avoid sentimentality at all costs. To accomplish this, she adopts what you might call the school-of-Annie-Baker approach, involving long pauses and seemingly irrelevant conversations that feature crucial revelations caught on the fly. (Interestingly, Smith is a student at University of Texas at Austin, where Baker teaches; she provided Smith with an introduction to Atlantic Theater.) When well-handled, this technique can yield gripping results. But it's an approach with no margin for error, and if it goes wrong, the results can be dispiriting. This is the net effect of Grief Camp; rather than give way to naked displays of emotion, Smith ends up cradling her characters much too closely, protecting them from critical scrutiny by focusing on eccentricities we are apparently meant to see as adorable. The highly excitable Blue is writing a musical titled "Untitled Mansion Island Purple House Project," which, she says, will be produced by her school "August through May." One of the musical's characters is an ocean, suffering from "really low self-esteem," and consults a therapist. ("I love it!!!" gushes another camper.) Bard, who is seemingly musical and well-versed in SpongeBob SquarePants lore, says, "I hate playing the clarinet. I feel like Squidward like every time I play. I'm playing, but I'm also watching myself play, and I'm like I look like Squidward right now. But I don't think I'm like Squidward at all." (Awfully glad we got that cleared up.) Luna, characterized in the script as loving grief camp, removes a bit of toenail, then offers it up ceremonially, praying to "the toenail god." Such precious, willfully cute behavior becomes wearying in a remarkably short time. We're clearly meant to see it as evidence of the derangements caused by grief, but the play barely engages with the tragedies that have brought the characters to this desolate place. Almost as irritating is Rocky, the camp's unseen owner, who uses the PA system to muse endlessly and inappropriately about his personal life -- and, bafflingly, about that of Alexander Graham Bell. The little bit of drama on offer focuses on Cade, who, despite his engineering degree, keeps returning as a counselor, and Olivia, who hides her sadness in hostile, passive-aggressive behavior. There is an obvious sexual tension between them, but their exchanges are increasingly tiresome, especially a lengthy takedown by Olivia, which would send anyone but Cade fleeing in the opposite direction. The actors are put through their depressed paces by the director Les Waters, but among them, only Jack DiFalco as Cade earns much sympathetic interest. (Alden Harris-McCoy provides some relief as a guitar player who sometimes serenades the campers.) Louisa Thompson's bunkhouse set is filled with telling details, including the frisbee on the roof and the sad little pennants deployed in a failed attempt at decoration. Isabella Byrd's lighting efficiently provides many time-of-day and atmospheric looks. (It rains a lot in the corner of Virgina where the play unfolds.) Bray Poor's sound design delivers storm effects, PA announcements, and the thump of dance music from offstage. Oana Botez's costumes are among the most unattractive in recent memory, which is a kind of praise: These kids are so emotionally poleaxed, they don't care how they look. Most debut works combine interesting elements with rookie errors; in contrast, Grief Camp is a big swing that lands ultra-wide of the mark. A lot of notable people believe in Smith's talent. Let's wait and see what she does next before drawing rash conclusions. In brief: I caught up late with Becoming Eve at the New York Theatre Workshop at Abrons Art Center, which closes this weekend. (My earlier press performance was canceled due to illness in the cast.) It's a fascinating story, and I wish it were better told: Based on the memoir by Abby Chava Stein, it is the story of Chava, born male and raised to be an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, who leaves it all behind (including a wife and son) to become a woman. And you think you've got problems: Chava, who grew up in a Williamsburg enclave, has made a new life in Manhattan, including a stellar career at Columbia. But the truth will come out, and, fearing she will be outed to her parents, she summons her father for a candid parental visit. Only her father shows up and he isn't in a mood to be flexible with an erring child. It's a tantalizing setup, made even more so by the presence of Jonah, a Reform rabbi, whom Chava has pressed into service as a moderator. Interestingly, Chava buttressing her position, has found a novel argument about Abraham and Isaac among one of the most revered Biblical commentators. It's enough to stop her father cold, if only for a second. It certainly helps that Tyne Rafaeli's production has found three commanding leads in Tommy Dorfman (Chava), Richard Schiff (her father), and Brandon Uranowitz (Jonah). In its best passages, Becoming Eve is a high-powered three-way argument about the meaning of faith and the primacy of identity, played out with real-life consequences for the fate of a family. But, in Emil Weinstein's script, the action is too often interrupted by multiple flashbacks, unhelpfully featuring a puppet version of Chava as a young man. Dorfman remains onstage, speaking for Chava; to obscure the presence of her and the puppeteers, Ben Stanton's lighting turns murky, leaving the other characters hard to make out. Scenic transitions are accompanied by blinder effects and portentous music and sound cues (by Uptown Works), which unnecessarily hype the action. The real drama is with the three principals, and one starts to resent the time spent away from them. Even if much of what we learn from the flashbacks could be folded into the scenes set in the present, Rad Pereira is solid as Chava's yeshiva friend (who, under the right circumstances, might be something more), as is Tedra Millan as Chava's amazingly tolerant wife. (Her swift condemnation of Chava for eating a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich is preceded by an avid desire to know how it tasted.) Judy Kuhn is criminally underused as Chava's mother, but is always great to have around. Arnulfo Maldonado's set, depicting a tiny, shabby, Upper West Side synagogue, feels totally right, as do Enver Chakartash's costumes. Becoming Eve has a lot going for it, but it leaves one wanting more. At least it may boost sales of Stein's book to theatergoers eager to fill in the play's blank spots. --David Barbour 
|
