God's Ear at Red Eye Theater on 4/17/09
By: David de Young
God’s Ear, Jenny Schwartz’s poetically-infused drama about a married couple trying to cope with the death of a son, was first produced in New York City in the spring of 2007. Friday night, Red Eye Theater gave the play an engaging and thought-provoking area premier as part of the Minneapolis Theater company’s 25th season.
Directed by Steve Busa, Red Eye’s production features Sara Richardson as Mel and Dylan Fresco as Ted, a couple who have recently lost their young son to accidental drowning. As an audience we eavesdrop on the unique ways each of them mourn and watch as their marriage suffers under the strain. Their remaining child, daughter Lanie (Meg Crawford), helps them limp along the path to healing with the candid inquisitiveness of a child. Lanie asks her mother at one point, “Who’s the saddest?” as if grief were some sort of competition. In a macabre twist of coincidence, as Ted travels on business, most everyone he strikes up conversation with also just so happens to have a dead son.
Clichés and rhythmic wordplay abound in Schwartz’s script, and those clichés serve as a device that drive the dialog forward, creating an awkward distance between the words spoken and the real human emotions to which they refer. Conversations run in circles, returning to their starting point and beginning again. Repetition of questions with different answers each time hint at the complex and contradictory feelings often associated with loss (or human emotion in general.) Schwartz effectively demonstrates that when you pile enough cliché’s one on top of another, the construct eventually cracks under its own weight and you begin see what’s really going on behind the words through the fissures. Showing us real grief by using language that always falls short is how this script and production succeeds.
In another clever theatric device, mere mentions The Tooth Fairy and G.I. Joe result in those entities entering the play as supporting characters (played by Miriam Must and Stephen Pearce respectively.) These characters also help ground the others, reminding them of realities as they continually seem to flee from them. Mel and Lanie bury a G.I. Joe action figure in the sandbox. When G.I. Joe appears life-size and in the flesh moments later, Mel and Joe argue: “We buried you,” Mel says. “I escaped,” Joe replies, a clear metaphor for the pain she has tried but failed to push aside.
Richardson and Fresco are uncommonly familiar as the modern couple. Miriam Must is a real treat as The Tooth Fairy, complete with battered wings. Other roles which serve to broaden out the show are Lenora (played delightfully by Sara Truesdale ) and Guy (played with appropriate dryness by Bruce Abas.) A transvestite flight attendant (also played by Stephen Pearce) also figures in. The play features several songs by composer David Means, but is far from a musical, the songs being more incidental and at times almost arbitrary.
The hour and 45 minute show that runs straight through with no intermission left me with a somewhat uneasy feeling as it came to a close. It’s not the sort of play that’s easily discussed immediately after seeing it; rather it’s good to let it sink in for a day or so. It certainly serves as a reminder that people dealing with loss frequently do just about everything except deal with it. Though some of the quirkiness here means the show is not for everyone, God’s Ear is definitely worth catching for the quality of the performances and the cleverness of the script on their own.
God’s Ear runs through May 3rd. Tickets and more info from http://www.redeyetheater.org
Location Info:
Red Eye Theater
Artist Info: Red Eye Theater
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