Carbon Black
Watching the news lately might send anyone hiding underneath the covers, but in Terry Gomez’s new play, fear keeps a mother, Sylvie (Sheila Tousey), and her thirteen-year-old son, Inky (Michael Drummond), prisoners in their own home. For Sylvie, who hasn’t left their apartment for “4 years, 2 months and 11 days,” the panic of “the outside coming in,” forces her sensitive son to act as caretaker in an enabling switch of role reversal.
After an attack on her way home, Sylvie regresses into a helpless, childlike state in which anything beyond her shabby dwelling is necessarily dangerous and bad. Ironically, she feeds and justifies her histrionic frenzy with an oversaturation of daily news programs sensationalizing urban threats: prairie dogs infected with the Bubonic plague, a possible pandemic, botulism, child abductions and a murder that hits too close to home. All of these keep Sylvie from dealing with her fears as she instead, accepts living in squalor while her son fishes food from nearby Dumpsters. Complicating her tenuous grasp on reality is Inky’s “episodes” – never fully explored within the play and his adamant belief he heard a murder from their balcony.
Meanwhile, the dynamics of their relationship takes its toll when Inky misses more than a week of school. His truancy gets the attention of a crippled Vice-Principal Tucker (Stephan Wolfert) and an empathetic guidance counselor Lisa Yellowtree (Tonantzin Carmelo). Through regular meetings with Yellowtree, Inky confides in her and a close bond develops in spite of Sylvie’s jealousy and suspicion.
Gomez’s suburban nightmare has all the elements of a psychological thriller, but fails to deliver more than a superficial character study of mental illness and the burden it places on unsuspecting victims. Although there are some excellent turnabouts of victims and victimizers throughout, the formulaic plot leaves much to be desired and the anti-climatic conclusion suffers from either unclear staging or uncertainty on Gomez’s part. The daily terrors infiltrating through news broadcasts, Sylvie’s assault and the instability from a fear-fulfilling based society are timely posits in our post-9/11 world, but the caricatures, especially Tucker who seems modeled after the TV show character House, and the unremarkable dialogue grinds away any social commentary or substance.
The cast does a veritable job given their roles. Tousey is well cast, but never reaches a believable level of hysteria after Inky goes missing. Shackling most of her action is a lot of hand wringing, audible sighing and stomping around. To Tousey’s credit, the dialogue rarely gives her more than pronouncements, but a lack of chemistry between her and Drummond as Inky further hampers a promising performance. Unlike Tousey, Drummond seems miscast excepting his youthful, awkward demeanor from behind his thick glasses and shock of curly, cherubim hair. Starting strong, Drummond’s stamina peters away until his disappearance goes hardly noticed. Wolfert has the thankless task of appearing bitter and crippled with no real recompense. The only standout is Carmelo who maintains a genial consistency with an appropriate blend of concern.
Set design by Susan Baker Scharpf creatively splits Inky’s two worlds with an unfinished structure and three cutout trees in the background. Costume and props by Christina Wright are unimaginative but apropos, especially Sylvie’s pink kitten T-shirt contrasted against Yellowtree’s tailored brightly colored ensembles.
Gomez tackles a fascinating social and complex dilemma, but like the titled character of Inky – “Carbon Black” – there is too much of too little to thrill or captivate in this moody play.
“Carbon Black”
Runs through Nov 22
Thurs and Fri at 8pm
Saturday at 2 & 8pm
Sunday at 2pm
Wells Fargo Theater
Autry National Center of the American West
4700 Western Heritage Way
Los Angeles, CA 90027-1462
(Located within Griffith Park across from the Zoo)
PH: 866-468-3399
www.NativeVoicesattheAutry.org