Theatre in Review: The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters (Playwrights Horizons)According to Marlane Meyer, the patron saint of sea monsters is St. Martyrbride; her spiritual purview also includes spinsters and those with childhood infirmities. She is entirely the playwright's invention; she isn't even one of those saints -- likes Christopher -- who were downgraded during Vatican II. But she is hardly the only contrived thing about The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters. A bizarre amalgam of metaphysical speculation and white trash antics à la Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Meyer's play seems hell-bent on stupefying the audience into submission. Suffice it to say, if you've ever wondered what it would be like to see Candy Buckley discussing the epic nature of her vaginal infections, this is the play for you. Meyer's plot defies description, but here goes: Aubrey Lincoln returns to the small Western town where she grew up and opens a free health clinic. (Given the way the locals talk about venereal disease, her services are sorely needed.) A devout Catholic, and afflicted with a leg-length discrepancy, she is determined to meet and marry her soul mate. The trouble is, she is attracted to Calvin Little, for whom she pined as a child. An alcoholic and liar who can't hold a job and who, on those occasions when he can manage an erection, sleeps with someone known as "big-titted Betty," Calvin may not live up to Aubrey's high standards. For one thing, he keeps referring to Aubrey as "Audrey." And when she lends him money to buy a suit for a job interview, he runs off for a bacchanalia with Betty. Also, Calvin is strongly suspected of killing his wife, who has mysteriously disappeared. (Marriage is a dangerous state in these parts. Another character, Jack, beats his wife regularly and may have killed her as well.) Nevertheless, Aubrey decides that Calvin is The One and pursues him avidly, throwing over her do-gooding existence for him even as he uses and betrays her and as Helen, his chain-smoking mantrap of a mother, actively discourages the romance. The gallery of grotesques surrounding this bad romance includes Canadian Bill, a bookish factory worker who dreams of becoming a private detective; Lynette, Aubrey's mother, a pill-popping nutcase who enjoys living in a high-end institution; and Psychic Tom, who makes dire predictions about Aubrey's future. Somewhere deep inside The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters is a considered discussion of the nature of love and how it manifests itself in its spiritual and carnal forms. Most of the time, however, it is obscured by Meyer's coarse jokes and calculated vulgarities. Speedy, a friend of Calvin, complains, "I took out that high school girl who said she was a virgin and I still got a rash on my dick." "Try wearing a condom," Calvin advises. "I would, you know," replies Speedy, "but it's in my head to have kids at some point." Beginning to feel Aubrey's benign influence, Calvin says, "I think I better go, as I am feeling those velvet claws encircling my nut sack." When, during a pelvic examination, Aubrey asks Helen (who could use an around-the-clock gynecologist) about her marriage, Helen snaps, "You can tell how long I was married from looking in my cootch? What's that look like? Rings in a tree?" As Aubrey's life hits the downward slope, she takes to wearing the wedding gown she's been keeping all these years, never mind that it gets stained and dirty from running around in the forest. She even takes to imitating Helen a bit, dressing in tacky, leopard-patterned tops. Meanwhile, Calvin starts to have pangs of conscience, ending up for a time in prison, where his cellmate, Ray, says he wants to cuddle with him. "It would start as cuddling and end as rape," says Calvin. "The course of true love never did run smooth, Calvin," Ray replies. Appearing from time to time are St. Martyrbride and Jesus Christ, and during the scene changes, members of the cast turn up in animal masks. From time to time, the characters, facing the audience, deliver little Brechtian sermons. For example, when someone comments, "Everyone is struggling," Aubrey replies, "No, they're not. The men who lost the American people jobs and gutted their pensions still have jobs and, in fact, are thriving ... At what point did we become two Americas?" All of this becomes wearying very, very quickly, even though Laura Heisler works hard at staying winsome as Aubrey and Rob Campbell does manage to suggest the stirrings of goodness in Calvin. The real tour-de-force in Lisa Peterson's admittedly fast-paced and confident production is delivered by Buckley; this game-for-anything pro is triply cast as the big-haired, foul-mouthed Helen; the heavily sedated Lynette (meeting Calvin, she tells Laura, "So you finally hooked your whale."); and Aubrey's genteel landlady ("I have only experienced sex the one time I was impregnated. And vicariously with Johnny Depp, the movie star."). It helps that Rachel Hauck's set design, with a false proscenium flashing the play's title and various woodland creatures inhabiting tree branches, is an imaginative creation. Paloma Young's costumes are so skillfully done that it may be late in the evening before you realize that all the characters are played by only six actors. Russell H. Champa's lighting and Darron L West's sound design are also solid. But The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters takes an interesting discussion and buries it inside a hot mess of crude jokes and trashy plot developments. If Meyer is intentionally pandering to her audiences, she must have a startlingly low estimation of their intelligence. The patron saint she should turn her attention to is St. Jude, the patron of lost causes.--David Barbour 
|
