Theatre in Review: Sleeping Rough (Page 73 Productions/The Wild Project)

	Kellie Overbey. Photo: Peter James Zielinski

Sleeping Rough is a good chance to meet up with a talented new writer, Kara Manning, even if one has to wonder if she has chosen the right medium for her sorrowful story, about a fractured family's response to a tragic death. Nevertheless, she peoples the stage with three complicated, troubled, and eminently recognizable people.

For example, there's Joanna, a divorced, out-of-work graphic designer from New Jersey. Facing a set of ever-diminishing expectations at 46, hers would be a sad case under any circumstance, but we quickly learn that her son, Charlie, has been killed on a tour of duty in Iraq. (The year is 2008.) Something of an ex-hippie, she cannot grasp why he joined the military, seemingly on a whim. Inconsolable and driven to act out her rage, she starts burning American flags in public, an act that the local police don't appreciate. Such activities alarm her daughter, Izzy, a Brooklyn-based beekeeper, whose attempts at help Joanna constantly rebuffs. Finally, consumed with the need to do something, anything, Joanna flies to London, where she moves into a squat with a drug dealer and several apparently artistic types. Using her design skills, she makes a stencil of Charlie's face, which she spray-paints on surfaces all over the city.

Why London? She was happy there once, in the early days of her marriage to Mark, a music industry type who, when we meet him, is a burned-out DJ on the BBC, in grave danger of losing his job and not sure he cares anymore. Married again -- not happily -- he is sick of working in an industry where, only in his 40s, he is regarded as a relic of the Brit Pop era of the 1980s. Meanwhile, Izzy, the only remaining product of their marriage, is devoted only to "the girls" -- the population of her apiary -- spending most of her time tending them and worrying about colony collapse disorder. When Joanna disappears from home, Izzy follows her to London, drawing a reluctant Mark into what becomes a pained family reunion.

Sleeping Rough is at its best when the characters are busy taking stock of the depredations of time. The gulf between Izzy and Joanna is neatly demonstrated in their reactions to the Woodstock Festivals of 1969 and 1999. ("I don't remember the music. I only remember the fights," says Izzy, putting Joanna on edge.) Summing up his career dilemma, Mark says, "I'm too old to be waiting in front of a place called Bar Vinyl, the oldest geezer on the pavement." Joanna, noting firmly that "nearly 50 is not the 40s," says that at her age "you stare in the mirror, and Picasso's Guernica stares back." Joanna's rage is rooted in the way Americans have adopted a purposeful amnesia about its failed Middle Eastern adventure. Her determination to plaster London with her son's face is the only way she knows to keep his memory alive.

Manning casts a mordant eye on all three characters, excavating their sorrows with a bleak, economical wit. Mark describes his angry wife, staring at him with eyes that are "emerald slits of impatience." Izzy informs Mark that his house is "like the Gaza Strip of North London." Weary with Joanna's behavior, Izzy adds, "I wish she'd just get depressed like a normal person." Mark notes, sadly, "Izzy has rewarding conversations with bees. Not me."

But, for all its insights, there's a big if attached to Sleeping Rough. In a script that is top-heavy with scenes of direct address -- it takes forever before we get to a real confrontation -- there is a marked absence of drama. And with a cast of three clinically depressed characters, all in mourning and each possessed of a laundry list of complaints, Sleeping Rough at times feels dreary and static. Oddly, the more these troubles are aired, the more Charlie, the apparent reason for their sorrow, recedes in importance; their grief is often obscured by their complaining. As described, we never get a sense of who Charlie was, and his snap decision to join the military is never explored. "He was such a hippie kid," says Mark. "Worried about protecting oceans. Protesting deforestation." So what drove him to Diyala Province?

Watching the characters go round after round, rehashing the past and assigning blame, one begins to wonder if -- especially given its use of a shifting point of view -- Sleeping Rough might not work better as a novel. Still, under Sam Buntrock's direction, Kellie Overbey's Joanna is one of her finest characterizations, capturing her furious, hard-edged determination as well as the sadness that can turn her so quickly to tears. As Izzy, Renata Friedman gives a good account of a young woman who is quickly growing tired of policing her willful parents. If Mark, with his many grievances, is something of a trial at times, that's because Quentin Maré is too honest an actor to sugarcoat the self-involved character that Manning wrote.

In any case, Buntrock's production has a sleek, original look. The action unfolds on a largely white stage filled with cardboard archive boxes (which, among other things, are highly useful for storing props). The stage is framed in white fluorescent units. A translucent plastic ceiling undulates overhead. Behind it are strips of white and blue-gelled fluorescent, plus white fairy lights, all of which are used by the lighting designer, Brian Tovar, to create a variety of looks. The sound design, by Jill BC Du Boff and Sam Kusnetz, is unusually complex, taking in a range of effects from buzzing bees to passing cars to birdsong to one of Mark's radio broadcasts. Kaye Voyce's costumes, almost all of them in black, suit the characters well.

Line by line, Sleeping Rough impresses; the next time Manning's name appears on a project, it will certainly be worth checking out. She's got the character part down pat, but she needs to make something happen between the people she creates. --David Barbour