If you were to look up "storefront theater" in the dictionary, in an ideal world you'd find a picture of The Side Studio, the enjoyably gritty home to the side project's latest offering, "On My Parents' One Hundredth Wedding Anniversary." Cold, dilapidated, and barely bigger than a breadbox, the space has been dressed up—well, more accurately, dressed down—by designers Sarah Bendix and Jill Norris to resemble the interior of a demented madame's jewel box. So great is the entwinement of space with surroundings that the putrid water pooling on the floor of the Jarvis L platform across the street feels like an ingenious extension of the set (I can only assume it's not, but you never know).
The immersive design may be the best thing Jesse Weaver's odd, overwritten play has going for it. Weaver's idea is to explode the conventions that have gradually accrued like sea barnacles to the hoary old form known as the "memory play." A cheerful older woman dressed in severe black (Mickey Crocker) welcomes us to her parents' one hundredth anniversary party; two age-shriveled figures emerge, with aching slowness, and fidget with their clothing. The woman in black informs us that this pair will reenact the fraught story of their marriage, as they do every anniversary. Suddenly, in the play's most fully realized coup de theatre, overcoats, thick glasses and hunched backs are shed to reveal the youthful forms of Katja (Jessica Hudson), the graceful ballet dancer, and Lev (Michael E. Smith), the European "impresario" who takes her to Paris to make her a star.
At first the reenactment goes according to plan. But this time, it appears, something is different: Katja has altered the script, and the increasingly dark, repressed details of their love affair begin to emerge: the unwanted pregnancy, the other woman (a rival Italian ballerina, played by a seriously distressed puppet). It's a well-worn device—flailing actors unable to maintain control of their own play—but Weaver brings an admirable freshness, if a sometimes cloying cleverness, to his characters and their vexing situation.
Inevitably, though, the constant interruptions and self-reflective asides grow tiresome. And when Weaver becomes overly enamoured with his own verbal dexterity (a not infrequent occurrence) we lose the crucial sense of forward momentum that gives coherence to such a set-up. All this before the play's second half goes off the meta-theatrical deep end, and turns into what might happen if you told Tennessee Williams to translate Luigi Pirandello and then slammed him over the head with a frying pan.
Nevertheless, director Matt Hawkins and his robust actors shape some fine moments of scrappy avant-gardism, aided by Adam Hubbell's appropriately nostalgic sound design: watch for the beam of light that emanates salaciously from the enormous antique chest dominating one part of the playing area. Perhaps best of all, the conceit of casting Crocker, an elegant performer of a certain age, to play daughter to the considerably younger Hudson and Smith, is a lovely way to get at the topsy-turvyness the production struggles to achieve.
Reviewed by Centerstage!
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