‘The Duration’ – A World Premiere of a Play with Enduring Relevancy

 

Palm Beach Dramaworks has staged a new highly charged family drama by Bruce Graham, The Duration.  It is the outcome of its successful Dramaworkshop.  The play was given a virtual reading by Drama (in the) Works last year and the process shows collaborative dramaturgy at its best.  Bruce Graham is not new to PBD, having had his play Early One Evening at the Rainbow Bar and Grille staged in the 2003 - 2004 season.  

Although “duration” refers to a time period, its etymology means “to harden.”  There is that and letting go in this affecting, but frequently unsettling drama of love and loss, the consequences of 9/11.  As serious as it is, the play is laced with humor, some dark and some laugh aloud a welcome balance, the way real people cope with heartache.   You also could call this a murder (of the spirit) mystery play and Graham keeps the audience in suspense as to where it might lead, to a startling climax, and a touching resolution.

Audrey Batten is a history professor at a catholic university, FDR’s administration being her forte.  She’s well-known, but a “low budget Doris Kearns Goodwin” as she self-deprecatingly acknowledges.  She is an advocate for sharp rational thinking and liberal values at least until 9/11, which resulted in the death of her son in the World Trade Center (her husband had been killed by a drunk driver only a year before).  Her former scientific reasoning is not helping her grieving heart. 

Seeing someone in a hijab at the university soon after 9/11 serves as a traumatic catalyst; suddenly Audrey leaves her academic surroundings, without notice, and rents an isolated cabin in the mountains of Pennsylvania.  Has she lost her mind in a crisis of anger and values?  In pursuit of an answer is her daughter Emma, suffering as well for the double loss of father as well as brother.

Caitlin Duffy and Elizabeth Dimon Photo by Tim Stepien

 

PBD veteran Elizabeth Dimon is ideal for the part of Audrey Batten, expressing a strong sense of nurturing, as she symbolically does with the feral cats she adopts around her rural oasis, while she deals with the indescribable pain of losing a child.  Dimon reaches into the depths of her character’s inner self to reveal hatred for the people who caused it, projecting a tough exterior to her daughter, Emma, and her good friend Douglas, as well as to herself.  She even finds redeemable virtues in her new rural neighbors, ones she would have normally dismissed as rednecks, but Audrey now sees just regular people, even artists among them. (“These people are out there in the real world,” she exclaims.)  Dimon effectively projects two personas, one nurturing, and the other an all-consuming rage.

Emma shares her mother’s grief about the loss of her brother, especially as they were twins.  She’s in the academic world as well, a poet, (“Nobody ever retired on a hit poem” she’s reminded by her mother). She frequently retreats to a support group in Newark, dealing with her pain and suffering over the death of her brother Eddie and her fear about what has happened to her mother, heretofore a rock of stability.  In her PBD debut as Emma, Caitlin Duffy effortlessly glides from tense scenes with her mother into talking to her support group, effectively delivering monologues to the group the audience imagines.

Emma’s favorite poet, Pablo Neruda, was known for his nightmarish surrealism.  Duffy skillfully projects her character’s sense of confused hopelessness.  She feels her world falling apart, her mother even buying a gun, taking target practice in the woods, Duffy channeling Emma’s incredulity: “Where did you get the gun?” Answer: ”Walmart. It’s America, Emma!”  Here is yet another layer to the play, the role guns play in the American sense of power.  Caitlin Duffy reaches real emotional depth on stage particularly at the denouement when she cries out “I need my mother!”  Audrey and Emma are then finally able to move towards one another in a healing reconciliation.

Elizabeth Dimon and John Leonard Thompson

 

And she’s not the only one who is worried about what has happened to Audrey Batten.  There is Douglas, her colleague and close friend, whose life in academia seems to have reached its own boiling point, bored and frustrated, considering stepping down.  He is not only a college administrator, but a priest and there is clever banter back and forth between him and the scientific thinker, Audrey.  He is incredulous that Audrey is living in such a ramshackle place, unkempt and looking like a bag lady.  It’s good to see John Leonard Thompson as Father Douglas Kelly back on the PBD stage again.  He is a gifted actor who can play a wide range of characters.  He is frightened for his friend and mines that concern in a somewhat fractious manner as only a skilled actor could do.

There are so many themes running through this inventive, moving play, but the arc is the divisiveness in this country that has only magnified since that unspeakable event of 9/11.  “Political correctness” permeates the timbre of discourse.  While the play ends with hope, what these characters go through to get to their resolution, will have the exiting audience wondering whether we are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past.  Can we endure?  Good theatre is universally relevant.  As Audrey so movingly articulates, throughout history every generation seems to have its crisis.  Isn’t at least one generation entitled to relax?  What is to become of our children and grandchildren living in constant tension?

J Barry Lewis, directs this play with a sure hand as always bringing his insightful intelligence into the action, always challenging with a world premiere.  This is his distinctive vision of the playwright’s intent, examining the issue of loss of a child by a parent, and the implications for a woman such as Audrey Batten.  He focuses on the power of anger to blind her to this new wrenching reality and her need to go through the stages of grief to find release.

 

The striking scenic design is by Michael Amico, who beautifully captures the rustic cabin with its dilapidated décor, reflecting on the sadness of the characters.  There are subtle atmospheric reminders of the Twin Towers with trident shapes embedded in the set.  The highly functional design has an outdoor so perfect for relocating action and of course where the feral cats visit.

Kirk Bookman’s lighting design shows the dappled leaves, changing to deeper colors of the fall, and follows the action from Audrey’s cabin to Emma’s therapy sessions with distinctive lighting changes. There is a cinematic flow, with no blackouts, making for highly effective theatre keeping the audience’s attention.

Sound design is by Roger Arnold who skillfully incorporates some subtle sounds of the rustic scene, some birds, cricket, and those of the feral cats.  His sound design signals Emma’s transition from the cabin into her group therapy in Newark, replete with urban sounds.  And there are the disturbing gunshots off stage as Audrey delights in her new-found “power.”

Award-winning Brian O’Keefe’s costumes reflect the times and the emotional state of the characters.  Audrey arrives at the cabin more professionally dressed but as her spirit hardens, and days turn, she slips into a disheveled state, both physically and emotionally.  Emma‘s numerous outfits are an eclectic, bohemian look but towards the end, as the characters reconcile, their dress becomes more harmonic.

The Duration by Bruce Graham is a highly relevant new play.  This is what Palm Beach Dramaworks does best: family dramas and, in this case, having had a hand in its development.  To see it all come together in the world premiere, from the initial readings, and now the fully staged version is nothing short of thrilling.  The Duration will surely be discovered by other theatres, so those in the West Palm Beach area can continue to see it at PBD through March 6.

 

Almost, Maine -- Love Glows in the Northern Lights at Palm Beach Dramaworks

 

 

Yet another consequence of the unreal times in which we live: planning anything seems to be impossible.  Due to Omicron there was no official Palm Beach Dramaworks opening night of Almost, Maine; the theatre wisely delayed their first few performances of the play.  Because of scheduling, I am now reviewing the play more than a week after the run began. 

 

Ah, the play.  All those Hollywood adjectives apply, heartwarming, touching, a bittersweet combination of happiness/sadness.  In lesser theatrical hands it’s an easy slope into corny, but both the playwright and Palm Beach Dramaworks guard against that and instead this production aspires to an uplifting view of the human condition with all the things we share, especially the serendipity and vulnerability of love, reaching a kind of nobility characteristic of great American romantic comedies, literature, and drama.

 

Place and the people who have lived their entire lives among each other tie this series of nine vignettes together, all action arising during the same ten minutes on a dark Friday night and set in the mythical unincorporated town of Almost, Maine which is so far north it might as well be in Canada.  They talk a little funny, they are idiosyncratic, but they share the magic realism of the Northern Lights which keep appearing in the tales.  The play is a descendant of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and the citizens of Grover's Corners.  As a collection of stories it shares some of the rhythm and poetry of the short story collections of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, and the isolation one senses in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.  The common thread of all is small town America, with the universality of its major themes applying to the human condition.

 

The sum of the stories is greater than its parts and its homespun wisdom shines.  Expect the unexpected as you would in an O’Henry short story, and be prepared to shed a few tears, not being sure whether they are ones of joy or sadness or just tears that we are alive.  As Sondheim says, life is Company.  We are on the same journey as these people.

 

The success of this play totally depends on its expert execution.  Here Palm Beach Dramaworks excels.

 

Veteran Palm Beach Dramaworks director, J. Barry Lewis, orchestrates this production like a fine piece of chamber music, tying together the tender romantic themes while balancing them with the comedic touches exactly as the playwright, John Cariani, intended.  Lewis enhances those moments with split second comedic timing.  In lesser hands this play could slide into sentimentality but the Director guards against that.

 

There are four highly experienced professional actors playing 18 different roles in eight scenes and a Prologue, Interlogue, and Epilogue (those three sections tying the scenes together): Niki Fridh (Woman 1), Brandon Morris (Man 1), Irene Adjan (Woman 2), and Shane Tanner (Man 2).  Adjan and Tanner are PBD veterans, while Fridh and Morris are newcomers to the theatre but fit right in with the PBD vibe.  It seems to me that these actors were relishing playing multiple parts from different perspectives, not being bound by issues of character development and being able to show their wide range of acting skills and comedic abilities.  There are several great comic lines, but the physical comedic moment of “They Fell” when Randy (played by Shane Tanner) and Chad (played by Brandon Morris) “fall” for each other is special.

Brandon Morris and Niki Fridh photo by Tim Stephien

 

Set design for a play of this type where all the actions are mostly outdoors involves presentational sets that can be quickly employed against a minimalist stage meant to denote the outdoors and the possibility of the Northern Lights.  PBD Set Designer, Michael Amico comes up with his usual functional and attractive sets such as the doorway to the “Moose Paddy” the “local hangout” bar of the “Almostians.”  The attention to detail of the set design, such as the snow where the background meets the stage, enhances the production.

 

Outstanding lighting design by Kirk Bookman not only follows the action but sets the deep emotional tone when the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights appear, or when the stars shine brightly against the cold dark sky.

 

How does a theatre company successfully differentiate so many characters being played by only four actors?  Answer: costume designs by Brian O’Keefe.  There are the requisite Bean boots, jeans, flannel shirts and flap-eared caps, gloves, mufflers, and puffy down vests, all of which could come out of an L.L. Bean catalogue, a different outfit for every scene.  The one thing in common is they’re dressed up to the neck, except in “Seeing The Thing” when Rhona (Irene Adjan) and Dave (Shane Tanner) hilariously strip layer upon layer of O’Keefe’s costumes down to their long johns to consummate their long “friendship” finding love in the dark woods of Almost, Maine on a Friday night around 9.00 pm. 

 

The props are particularly significant, the ice skate falling from the sky in “Where It Went” and the “bundles” of love Lendall (Brandon Morris) had given Gayle (Niki Fridh), juxtaposed to the tiny package of love Gayle had given in return in “Getting It Back”.  These props and many others make for delightful, surprising moments in the play.

 

Sound design by Roger Arnold captures the mysterious and mildly threatening sounds of the woods at times and provides transitional music between scenes, a mix of country, blues, new age music that does not distract from the production but provides cover for those brief interludes.

 

There are two lines in the play Chad delivers to Randy in “They Fell” which encapsulate the “heart” of the play: “all  I could think about was how not much in this world makes me feel good or makes much sense anymore, and I got really scared, ‘cause there’s gotta be something that makes you feel good or at least makes sense in this world, or what’s the point, right?...But then I kinda came out of bein’ sad and actually felt okay, ‘cause I realized that there is one thing in this world that makes me feel really good and that does make sense, and it’s you.”

 

Palm Beach Dramaworks, well known for producing classical drama, has served up a welcome change of pace during these very disturbing times.  Pause, reflect, and bask in the glow of the Northern Lights, professionally staged and magically delivered on the north side of Clematis Street, West Palm Beach.