Free
Playwright Barbara Lindsay has a lengthy résumé. Her plays and monologues have received more than 170 national and international productions, including a Los Angeles Times Critic’s Choice for The Walkers presented by the Road Theater Co. Her full-length play 1-2195 won the Women’s Playwriting Award at UM St. Louis. Her short play Here to Serve You won the Peace Play Prize by Goshen College in Indiana. Lindsay’s adaptation of Medea will premiere at Seattle’s Theatre 9/12.
Free is Ms. Lindsay’s first play. She says it taught her how to be a playwright. In 1987 it was a one-act performed by The Company of Angeles. In 1989 its full-length version received the N.Y. Drama League Playwriting Award. I, however, would have preferred it to remain in its original form. The central idea of the play is fresh and clear with a romantic, ethereal fantasy and a love of life reminiscent of something our great playwright William Saroyan might have written. But as the evening progressed, it became redundant, repetitive, superficial, with little character development or depth. It sought the easy laughs.
The major premise of the play is that a man can float up into the air and thereby lift others out of the hard, mundane realities of their existence. Dealing with such a fantasy world would certainly open other acting avenues than dire realism. But this production was so over-the-top and ungrounded that all sense of humanity and simple believability was lost, and to such an extent that it was difficult to hear or care about the play. Most of the lead actors abused their voices, became hoarse shouting, speaking in falsetto finding only one or two emotional possibilities in their repertoire. There is some real talent on that stage, but it is allowed to run so out-of-hand that it becomes indulgent and terribly irritating. Lead Michael Earl Reid is the most interesting of the actors, but he is so misdirected that his natural simplicity and sweetness has nowhere to go. Without variety and with only one response-panic-he is totally lost in the second act drowning in hyperkinetic energy, as are the others. On a positive note, Donaco Smyth does very well in his cameo part, but by this time the play has descended into the silliest sit-com farce. .
The set seemed strange to me as stage right wasn’t used or blended out. There were some nice realistic features including real drapes, a genuine steam heater, doors with chains, aged walls, odd furniture, and then, incongruently, an air conditioner painted over the door.
Lights were inadequate and totally unimaginative in the crucial scene when the main character actually floats. Music could have been used at this moment also, but was not. Instead, jazzy music was interjected to beef up the frenetic activity in the second act.
Free is the second production in the 2010-11 season at [Inside] the Ford, a three-play, curated series of new works from three L.A.-based theatre companies that is supported by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Ford Theatre Foundations, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. This is a beautiful and worthy endeavor to make a wonderful acting space available to the theatre artists of Los Angeles at a reasonable price. Companies compete to be included in this opportunity. But if those in charge cannot find better productions or offer artistic guidance, I fear these “best laid plans” may go astray.
[Inside] the Ford
2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East
Hollywood, ca. 90068
(323) 461-3673 or www.FordTehatres.org
January 22 through February 27.