Play disappoints with fundamental flaws
When a play has been in rehearsals for a substantial amount of time, audiences expect the biggest problems on opening night to be technicalities. Worst-case scenario, there’s an understandable disconnect between the characters and the audience that can be fixed through routine tweaking of character portrayals and emotions.
Melodramatic mishap · Scenes of familial strife and relationship drama in To Carry the Child attempt to be dramatic but err on the side of melodrama, making audience members feel overworked and cheated. - Photo courtesy of Steve Jarrard
The opening night, Sept. 9, of To Carry The Child at the Raven Playhouse in North Hollywood found itself in the worst of worst-case scenarios.
Written by Jon Courie, the play tells the story of Ashley, a wannabe artist in the big city who finds out her cancer has returned and moves in with her dysfunctional family in North Carolina. They fight. They yell. They tell each other’s secrets. And they fight and yell some more.
Fundamentally, the play’s biggest problem is its structure. Courie has woven a shoddy web, built off the frail fibers of soap opera drama. The writing is cheap and the dialogue is forced.
Courie seems to believe the only entertaining drama comes from childish banter. Expect two or more yelling arguments per scene. If you’re lucky, that will be the most you get.
Drama shouldn’t stem from the teen-angst-driven emotions of the characters in the play; drama is a product of highly developed characters and believable situations.
Though the drama could very well be pulled from someone’s life today, the dialogue doesn’t have the mastery to convey the characters’ true emotions.
You also know there’s a problem when the main character has to spell out the moral of the show during the final five minutes — complete with pastel blue spotlight and insipid environmental music. As she huddles under the blinding spotlight, Ashley commands the audience to realize the running metaphor throughout the script, announcing “I am the shell.”
The playwright has fallen victim to a dramatist’s nightmare: assuming the audience doesn’t have the ability to read between the lines and to make its own inferences. The writing demeans the audience by speaking down to it and spoon-feeding the meat of the story.
Beyond the detrimental dialogue and story line, the acting became the second most noticeable flaw of the evening. Meg Wallace, who portrayed the hard-to-love Ashley, seemed uncomfortable and stale onstage. Admittedly, while Ashley’s character encompassed those two character traits, these were Wallace’s personal issues.
It played out like the uneasy high school productions most college students are still trying to wipe from their memories. Wallace even looked the high school part. Her costuming labeled her an angsty 13-year-old girl. Her shining moments included the few scenes with her lesbian lover, Diane (Justine Woodford).
Woodford brought out a welcome calm in Wallace that made some moments bearable and even tender.
Fortunately, To Carry The Child has some redemptive qualities, most vividly noticeable in some of the acting. Christine Haeberman successfully portrayed the simple sister Sissy. With her comedic ability and convincing presentation, Haeberman was able to get an occasional laugh. Robin Nuyen as the cynical, sarcastic father fell short of the mark, ironically being a little overemotional for his lines. Though his performance towered over Wallace, the character of Bo simply added to the uncomfortable atmosphere the night was intent upon delivering.
Thankfully, there was Libby, the falsely optimistic mother brought to life by Pamela Daly. Of all the cast members, Daly was able to give the most well-rounded character performance by being not only a protective, worried mother, but a comic in her own right. If you have a mother, you’ll relate with Daly’s interpretation. If you are a mother, you won’t want to.
It’s hard to say where To Carry The Child begins to unravel. It could have been the half-handed direction of Steve Jarrard. It could have been the repelling character portrayals. It might have been the 10th-grade script.
It is said actions speak louder than words, but not the way this cast hollered for two unbearable hours. Acting students be warned: You might want to see this show to learn what not to do in your careers. But if you do have an open weekend, go see Contagion and spare yourself the heavy burden of carrying this child.
Having seen the production the same weekend, I disagree with much of what Di Rosario-Connor wrote. Actually, I think Di Rosario opinions were misguided, while Connor’s were just idiotic. The play is no masterpiece, but it’s well-written, and could be effective if not played as soap opera. Wallace and Woodford are the only actors who do the play justice at all. Daly, singled out for the most praise by Di Rosario AND Connor, gave a performance that might be wonderfully effective in a different play, but she was not connected to the material, was not telling the story. Never for a moment did Daly let humanity and her character’s situations come through. Instead, we got lots of technique and no heart. Nuyen’s reactions were unmotivated, and he played the character way too stupid to suddenly be as reflective as he occasionally chose to be. His leaden pace was maddening as well.
As for Wallace, her scene late in the play, as her character is near death, is nothing short of extraordinary. It’s her best moment in an overall excellent performance.
Hollering for two hours? Did we see the same show? Nuyen’s mumbling, Haeberman’s lack of projection, and Daly’s emotionless reading of emotionally climactic lines left me wanting a good deal more hollerin’.
Tenth-grade script? Not everything can be an Ivy League Grad School script like Contagion.
As I scan this review, I find that practically every paragraph says the equivalent of “it was good but it was bad, or “it was bad, only it was good.” I can say with confidence that I know when the review unraveled: it was the second Jamie, Di Rosario and Connor breathlessly began to type.