Shake
Joshua Fardon’s time bending new play tries to shake out a story following the aftermath of 9/11, but fails to stir any emotional appeal or connection to this tragic event. Moving backwards in time through reverse chronology, the patchwork scenes provide little ground from which anyone can hope to understand the inexplicably hostile characters or their involvement with each other. As angry and shell-shocked as they are in August 2002, from which the play begins, they are just as distant and shattered to the play’s end the day before. Were it not for the date lit up between each transition, the passing of time—no matter its trajectory—is hardly relevant.
The play follows the intersecting lives of two couples and the entanglement of one mysterious woman, Claire (Hiwa Bourne) who acts as an enigmatic catalyst. The relationships are not clearly defined from the outset, but like following a trail of ellipses between each scene, Fardon connects the dots, however frustrating and convenient these connections may be.
At the center of all the tumult is Bill (Joe Egender) an AA sponsor to his good friend, Matthew (Troy Blendell) whose inability to accept his wife’s death at the WTC pushes him off the wagon. Bill’s former relationship to Peggy (Alina Phelan), a homeless wreck and struggling actress at the start of the show reveals the tenuous grasp of truths and realities to which they cling right up to the play’s curious lack of resolution.
Little by little, Fardon couples some strange pairings between these lost souls as they look outside to fill the emptiness within. Peggy explores her sexuality through the flattery of an acting partner, Belinda (Alana Dietze) after a mentoring tryst with co-worker Claire, who is not what she appears, other than a conduit for strange bedfellows. Matthew chooses to deceive himself with hope, but leaves the door open to further deception by Claire through Bill’s sympathetic but misguided scheme to help his widower friend. None of this offers any insight or perspective, other than an escape hatch for these New Yorkers stemming their all too consuming loneliness.
At the crux of these lives is the shadowy influence of Claire, whose support for Peggy to strike out on her own by terminating her pregnancy, ending her relationship with Bill and thereby pursue her acting ambitions unfettered leads to Peggy’s eventual self-destruction. Whatever Claire has to gain is never clear, or why she collides with these hapless yuppies only to leave them shaken to their core. Claire is ephemeral, sliding in and out, almost serendipitously, much like when she escaped certain death from the high-rise offices of the WTC by a twist of fate. If her influence improved lives following 9/11 then there may be a story to hang these hodgepodge scenes from, but like the shocking fury that brought down the buildings, Claire levels everyone in a seeming gray haze of smoke and mirrors. Her involvement in these matters however lacks any dramatic tension, other than a superficial curiosity that is never satisfied.
The only highlight in this otherwise bleak tale that smacks in tone of Patrick Marber’s “Closer” is Michelle Gardner’s hysterically authentic acting coach, Julia, whose, “like Uta Hagen, but without the books.” Her ripping and scathing criticism of Peggy’s lackluster “Antigone” will have any student of the arts rolling in their seats with her self-involved mannerisms and continual petting. The long-winded scene, squeezed into this show as a sort of comic relief, does the trick although it adds nothing to the plot. In terms of its monologue, however, this would be an excellent choice for auditioning actors of either gender for its freshness and mirth.
Fardon’s scene-strewn play scatters his characters on the winds of fate without any context other than the day that changed all our lives—but does not shake any feeling from its core.
“Shake”
Runs through Sept 5
Fri and Sat at 8pm
Sundays at 7pm
Theatre of NOTE
1517 N. Cahuenga
Hollywood, 90028
(Just North of Sunset)
Recommend Red Line to Hollywood & Vine Stop.
PH: 323-856-8611
www.theatreofnote.com