"Two
Rooms" has
had numerous productions since its first in 1988. One can legitimately ponder
the ways in which this play that centers on the experience of an American
hostage, his wife, a journalist, and a State Department official during a time
almost two decades prior to September 11, 2001 plays differently now in the
United States after that pivotal cultural and political and experiential
divide. And perhaps the ways in which the play resonates, as many pieces of
good theatre, grows with the times, given changing times. This Theatre
Entropy
production has a striking lack of dramaturgical contextual materials on the
walls of the theatre or in the program. We join our characters in their time,
in their places, set in the mid 1980s, as an audience in the United States with
all of our specific historical experience of the past five years, including
crumbling towers and our own officially sanctioned hostage taking in military
prisons. We join this play on its own terms but with our own particular and
specific immediate historical context, which the production does not attempt to
disentangle. Lee Blessing is a playwright who takes edgy and unlikable characters
and allow us as an audience to care about them -- he engaged with the irascible
professional baseball player Ty Cobb in "Cobb", for example, in 1989, and
a pair of arms negotiators (one Russian and one American) in "A Walk in
the Woods"
in 1986. He tackles in this play the conflicting human and public/political
sides of small and large terrorist acts, and it is a stunning text.
The
play artfully uses the metaphor of natural selection as a source of hope and a
very theatrical construct. American teacher Michael (Brian Troyan) is held captive, blindfolded,
confined in a bare cell room (or series of rooms) as hostage in Beirut.
Michael's naturalist American wife Lanie (Sarah Ibis), returns after the kidnapping
to the Washington, DC area (precise coordinates never specified) and creates a
duplicate room in her home as a place to commune with the missing Michael. The
theatre in this piece is in how the characters in these two spaces do or do not
interact. Three of our characters communicate in real time: Lanie, the angry
and solitary American wife; Walker (John Wehrman) an American journalist hungry
for an expose of the actions and inactions of the State Department on behalf of
Michael; and Ellen (Melissa Freiman) the State Department drone and caseworker for Lanie,
who has some of the most resonantly haunting lines speaking of the rational
interests of government that often act irrationally against the interests of
the individual hostages and their families. Our fourth character Michael is
alone in his cell talking to himself and to his wife, through the verbal
"letters" her writes to her. Several characters interact in fantasy,
especially Michael and Lanie in each other's visions. One surprise is that
Michael the hostage interacts in a dream of his state department caseworker
Ellen. "We're not required to see you as real", she says. The journalist
Walker does not bother focusing on Michael individually, but on the voice of
his wife. Walker looks only at Lanie, and when he finally gets from her what he
has been trying to obtain for several years (her voice in several interviews
talking about the delays by the State Department in Michael's case), he moves
on, willingly. Lanie has served her purpose.
This
troupe of young actors makes stalwart efforts with this difficult and nuanced
text. Sarah Ibis as Lanie is perhaps too earnest and plaintive, without the
gravitas yet to pull off the role. I found myself pulled out of moments
continually during her performance when this was not the case with the other
members of the company. But this will come for her; she is a charming on-stage
presence.
Director
Monica Wilson
and dramaturg Erin Jones create projections representing mid-1980s political hostages and
events to augment the story telling at key junctures. The spareness of the set
and costuming, for the most part, allows for a universal late 20th century
feeling. One quibble: the journalist's one outfit appears to be a leisure suit
circa mid-1970s rather than the more probable attire for such a character of a
photographers/fisherman's multi-pocketed vest or other outfit out of fabrics
found in nature. Yes quibble, but in this sparely dressed set and with spared
costumed actors, each choice stands out.
The
No Exit Cafˇ performance space is perfect to evoke the world of this play: run
down and urban, rooms along a non touristy side street in Beirut or Tel Aviv or
suburban Washington (or Baghdad). In this space minimalism rules and lighting
designer Adam Derda and set designer Lisa Smeltzer have created much out of little. Four gelled
theatrical lights and one visible projector signal some production elements.
The primary lighting design is eight or nine ordinary spotlights that edge the
rectangular slightly raised playing space, highlighted by a bare bulb suspended
center stage, waiting to be illuminated. During the preshow and interval
sections, vaguely and pleasantly Middle Eastern musical comes from behind and
around the audience area. Our eyes and ears gradually grow accustomed to this
world.
The
play feels dated and current at the same time. Images from twenty years ago flashed
as part of the show remind us of the power and resonance of the particular
hostages during this particular phase of the Middle East struggles and
factions. We are reminded of names of individual hostages who survived and many
who did not, and the reaction is multilayered. We wonder: do we really have
memories that are this time-limited, or are these names and these details foggy
in our memories because similar struggles have continued, unabated, in the
ensuing years in the Middle East and the American response has changed due to
events that have occurred closer to home in the ensuing years? This is
disturbing and intriguing and powerful theatre. The production values perfectly
serve the play and the play speaks for itself. This is a play worth hearing and
it should be performed regularly. Thank you Theatre Entropy, for staging it for
us, in this place, at this time. This is a play worth revisiting regularly.