|
review In 1992, African-American thespian Roosevelt Blankenship, Jr. founded the Ensemble Theater to present black-themed and cross-cultural plays in Orange County. It soon acquired a reputation with a nice mix of American classics, some Fugard, even some Eric Overmyer. (In fact, David Boreanaz – now "Angel" on the WB – starred in its 1994 production of "A Hatful of Rain".) After a bit of a lull, the Ensemble is back with a full season for 2000 – and it starts with "Volcano", a new comedy-drama written by Blankenship and Kevin Darné. I would like to report that "Volcano" is, true to its name, an incendiary and molten play. It is not. Some good acting cannot mask the script’s flaws -– namely, its conveniences and disconnects from reality. We’re in New York City in the late 1960s. A white couple from Louisville (Stanford Godbey, Ruta Empakeris) arrives to visit their daughter Alicia (Stacy Bellew), who uses a wheelchair as a result of a car accident in the distant past. Since Daddy is a mean, piece-of-trash drunk, he’s obviously not going to thrill to the sight of Alicia’s boyfriend Dominick (Louis Hale). Dominick, after all, is black. Good stuff, huh? Well, not as it plays out. The characters are thinly drawn; they’re externally angry people whose inner lives are kept from us. Characters shout what they feel in this play – often. There’s a decent dramatic payoff, but the script has a stifling falseness. There are many questions to ask here. Isn’t it remarkable that a young, wheelchair-using woman lives independently in high-curbed, late-Sixties Manhattan? Hasn’t this "crippled" woman been deeply hurt and marginalized by her bigoted society – a circumstance only intensified by her public romance with a black man? Were Alicia and Dominick somehow initially attracted to each other’s struggles? If so, how did that attraction graduate to love? (And honestly, what are the odds of Dominick being a heterosexual dancer in New York City?) In the real world -– the world a realistic play like this presumably aims to reflect -– these questions would at least be explored. In "Volcano", they don’t even come up. There is also no real attempt to portray the Sixties – not in costuming, not in sets, not in props. (For example, the onstage phones are all push-button, not rotary-dial.) This is the kind of play in which a character can pick up a phone, get an operator in one second, and speak to the police two seconds later. (In New York, no less.) It’s also the kind of play you wish were much better. Hale’s sure performance is by far the best element; his confrontations with Godbey have real fire. Unfortunately, those sparks can’t keep this "Volcano" from fizzling. "Volcano", Th-Sat
thru Mar. 11 Copyright © 2000 The Write Word, Inc. All rights reserved. |