Women, Wallace, and Wow

The iF* and I headed down to the Nut on Friday night to watch a pair of one-act student productions, an actor-vehicle tour de force called "Women and Wallace" and a test-anxiety comedy called "This is a Test."For some reason my addled brain thought the shows started at 7, so when Beck got home from the clinic we rushed down there and grabbed Chili's, only to discover we had an hour to kill... so we drove over to Wellesley and drank a coffee at Peet's. Solid. Headed back to the Black Box Theater at The Nut, a side stage and intimate performance setting adjacent to the auditorium proper. After introducing Beck to a few miscellaneous parents (Grace's) and teachers (Madames Sand and Wilson, our French dept. extraordinaire), we sat down in the front row of the stadium seated Black Box to take in some culture. Remember that we were in the front row, because this means we were often 3 feet and never more than 15 feet away from the action. The action.

*(I am jumping on Karen's suggestion that Beck gets a reprieve from her more ferrous-based nickname and temporarily gets to join her family in the iNickname department as iFiancee. Last night we tried to think of a way she could maintain this nickname after a certain significant date, and she tried to pull something like "WiFe." Not only does this odd nickname looks like a chemical equation for a metal video-gaming system (Wii Fe), it also would have to be pronounced "WeeFay," which just makes her sound like a Borat line, like "Doo yu lyke my WeeFay? She's berry nice, berry nice." In other words, enjoy "iF" while it lasts).

My advisee Jon is playing the lead role of Wallace in WaW, the play directed by my awesome student and generally seventh level human being Danielle. I had heard that Jon was very talented, and all my jokes about ladies love cool jones yesterday aside, this guy around campus is the real LL Cool J. To say the very least, the guy owns the rumors. Jon is just amazing; this role bounces around a lot between intensity and sorrow, insecurity, weakness, reckless boldness, snide anger and comedy, and Jon nailed all aspects. Beck and I talked about the fact that some actors are very good but are obviously trying very hard; Jon is great, butter and natural as can be. I can't say enough great things about him as an actor - he was fantastic, an oddly enough, against the backdrop of an intense performance and often dark dramatic role, his top notch comedic timing stood out. I normally eschew giving people's full names here for all the obvious Sign-O-The-Times reasons, but Jon Victor - keep an eye out for this guy, he has got "It" in a big way.

So the stage is very small, minimalist set with chairs lining both sides of the room and a set of black-painted boxes in the middle that in typical minimalist fashion served multiple roles in the play - couch, coffee table, bed, park bench, etc. The play is framed by a number of pieces written and delivered in monologue by the lead Wallace. It starts with Wallace as a six year old delivering an ode to his mother and her peanut butter and banana sandwich making ability; Jon is enthralled by his mother, a small but vital role played by the otherworldly striking Britton. Wallace leaves for school on top of the world, but in a scene that made my heart plummet runaway elevator style (Britton and Danielle did an incredible job with this, the lighting, blocking and timing all conspired to deliver an emotional gut punch that set the tone for the entire show), Wallace's mother commits suicide with a kitchen knife. Wallace returns home from school that day to find his mother lying on the floor and a suicide note that reads "cremate the parasite." His life is set in motion. But during the scene change, mom does not exit stage left, but sits in the shadows on the left side of the stage. All of the women who Wallace encounters in his life, actually, do not exit the stage but sit on its side, serving as physical reminders of Wallace's path. Very cool blocking touch.

The remainder of the show consists of Wallace's attempts to deal with this traumatic jolt to his childhood and specifically with how his mother's death affects his relationships with women. And only women; Wallace is the only actualized male character in the play (though his father is referenced occasionally). The play traces these relationships - the first is a classic lunch-trading encounter a few days after his mother's suicide; the bubbly schoolgirl Victoria, played over-the-top to perfection by Sophie, has all the natural curiosity about boys and kissing and Wallace's mom's suicide that you would expect, but Wallace is a far cry from handling this. Actually, his lack of ability to handle it seems barely different from any 6 year old boy's ability to handle a member of the opposite sex; this scene was endearing in its subtle portrayal of the fact that other than some overt observations made by Wallace about his dad NOT disappearing after making him a sandwich, Wallace isn't really capable of manifesting the trauma yet, nor does he grasp what has happened. Their encounter ends in hilarious "Cooties!" fashion, and it is notably Wallace who rejects the advance.

We also see Wallace with his grandmother, a recurring character sharply played in highly stereotypical Jewish fashion by Alexa. This is another example of the height of performance that is the norm at the Nut; "stereotypically Jewish fashion" sounds like a dig, and at 99% of high school plays, it would be. But Alexa draped the role with subtle asides , touches, and snappy timing that made the role not only uproariously funny, but touching as well. She's Wallace's surrogate mother, and serves as his home base for questions and attempts to deal with his own life story; she also notably tempers Wallace's fickle temper with ease. She pops up again and again throughout the play and serves to ground the lead character, but manages to do so in a decidedly un-afterschool special fashion. She, too, was great, and her use of real-props - plates of cookies, milk glasses, etc. - brought a warmth to a mostly empty stage. She also delivered some of the more poignant lines - unlike the psych office (see below), her advice to not "blame your mother until you die" comes off as heartfelt and natural, and gives punch to the major moral theme of the show.

If the show had a weak spot, it was in the scenes between Wallace and his psychiatrist. I would not attribute this to the actress, Kathy, nor the director; the psychiatrist's part just seem odd and strangely written. She did not really *act* like a psychiatrist; Wallace is initially sent to her by his father because he is breaking glassware as a means of dealing with his emotional turmoil, and he later seeks her out to deal with some of his own confusion in relationships. But in both scenes, the psychiatrist serves as an inconsequential recipient of what barely amounts to a conversation, and is actually just more monologues that push the narrative along. My main problem with the scenes is how taken aback and rendered mute the psychiatrist is by Wallace's forceful personality, especially later int he play when she basically cowers before him. Kathy did a great job of portraying the clinical neutrality required of a psychiatrist and the real terror that the playwright wanted her to express. I just didn't find this as real as the bulk of the play was: sure, Wallace is in many ways a damaged human at these points in his life, but his place int he damaged human continuum is not something that is so extreme that a psychiatrist would be baffled by it. Unfortunately, a lot of the self-exegesis of the exact nature of Wallace's turmoil is revealed in these scenes, and they ring a little hollow. Case in point: I thought Wallace's descriptions of his breaking glassware to deal with his pain in his essay was much more powerful than the same description from his stand on the couch speech in the psychiatrist's office. The shrink's office did contain the scene where Wallace overtly confronts his mother and her death, and even tries to re-imagine his life had he stolen her knife. And this scene drilled the "accept yourself, work in the now and don't dwell on the past" aspects of the play (though it did so in a less graceful fashion than the grandmother scene mentioned above). But, I think, they could have taken place independent of the somewhat cliched psych-office visit.

And now, the part of the show that has the students abuzz: the kissing plus. Since so much of this is about Wallace's feelings about women, it is completely natural that his mother's death would slide into his early kissing and sexual experiences. And I would put a HUGE emphasis on natural - it would have been very easy for all of these scenes to have come across as awkward or unfeeling, but every one was pulled off sans anything awkward or childish; this was first rate professional work, and given the hormonal situations these teenagers are overcoming, it makes their accomplishment in this regard all the more impressive. Big kudos to the director for maximizing the power of these scenes, making them solidly emotional, frightening, heartwarming, and let's not forget, FREAKING hilarious. Wallace's interactions with the women (and his dialog, for that matter, which grew perfectly more adult as he progressed through his life) escalate in strength and desperation. His first-kiss encounter in middle school with Victoria, the same girl from the sandwich scene, turns from an awkward , do-we-really-have-to-do-this into scary eagerness in a heartbeat; he scares off his first "love." His second, an out-of-control alcohol-aided messy attempt at romancing the smart valedictorian (Sarah, played with cool dignity by Logan) of his school, goes from moving too fast to a pathetic attempt at apology; he ends the scene literally on his knees, blaming the moon for its failure to help him win her heart.

Oh, and then there's something I'll describe as "THE SCENE," and as I mentioned with the Borat film, there are some things my retina unfortunately cannot unsee. This in NO way because the scene was bad, or that it will traumatize me in anything near the same way 10 minutes of naked Borat wrestling with a fat naked man did. This is because it was a sex scene involving Grace!

A little background: Grace is an impossibly cute, sweet, lovely and soul-crushingly sincere and heartwarming sophomore from last semester's Alg. II class. She came in really struggling and disliking math, but we worked together on it a lot throughout the semester and she worked her butt off and did very well in the course. Her parents are awesome; they appreciated me and did great stuff like call the administrators to let them know what a good job I was doing, and called me for advice on what courses she should take and the like. In short, great family and great girl, definitely the type of person who makes all aspects of the job worth it. Furthermore, we serve the role of in loco parentis for all of our students, and I would definitely help anyone who needed anything, but with Grace it's not a vocational obligation - I feel wholly responsible and I owe it to her parents to ensure her well-being as much as I can. If anyone so much as laid a finger, etc., they would have a very angry Texan on their hands indeed. I get the feeling I would be the type of daughter's father who the boys would dread meeting.

So in this play, we find Wallace in his freshman dorm with Lili (played by Grace), a senior dancer who is VERY eager to deflower young Wallace (Grace's dad summed up the role as "slut." Her dad!). I can't even describe how awesome and funny this scene was; between Wallace's fumbling, Lili's intense, writhing and dancer-stretching Mrs. Robinson act, and some wickedly smart dialog, the whole scene of them talking pre-act was funny enough. That part of the scene ends when Wallace claps to turn off the lights, and everyone in the audience is applauding at the brilliance. But it's not over. Oh, no, no. With the house lights more or less out, Lili and Wallace have some quite believable simulated sex on stage, further riddled with hilarious dialog. The entire venue is pretty much exploding with laughter at this point. Laughter at the real funniness of the scene, but also, let's face it, the audience is at least fifty percent teenage, and they are watching their peers simulate sex on stage! Did I mention that Jon's mom and both of Grace's parents are in the audience? And did I mention that we are in a very small, intimate theater setting, so they are probably a whopping twenty feet from their faux-copulating offspring? Hello awkward.

So great acting could be summed up as that which makes you forget that there are actors up there. Um, in this scene, I did not forget. And I can't imagine what Grace's parents were feeling at this point (actually, Grace has been in productions like Hair before this, so this wasn't here first foray into on-stage seediness. Plus after the show, her mom delivered the BRILLIANT line, "As long as it's it's simulated, I'm okay with it."). And Grace, as Beck noted, was (um, Understandably!) nervous about this scene; you could see her carotid pulse pumping at 180 from across the room. But to everyone's credit, they pulled it off and then some - quintessentially professional, hilarious, heartfelt, and all of that, all in a context they had ever reason to crack in. So, damn - Grace was outstanding, and has all kinds of potential to be one of these brilliant comedic actresses - Gilda Radner readily comes to mind. But all of that said, I still spent the entire time dumbfounded with the willies.

Now let us never speak of this again. :)

The show ends with Lili disappointed in Wallace; she passes him off to her younger sister Nina (played well by Nina - this was a sympathetic role that could've devolved to wet-blanket girlfriend, but she carried herself well and, in the end, convincingly dropped into hate-fueled anger), with whom Wallace falls deeply and honestly in love. But with his residual pain from mother, he cannot trust her fully, so he cheats on her - and after some soul-searching, decides to tell her. She reacts violently, but ultimately comes back, leaving Wallace to reject his notion that women will always desert him.

I took a little bit of issue with this tidy ending to the play; again, not something the actors or director could have done much with, but I found it to be a little over-the-top Hallmark. The brutal truth is that there will be no curtain-closing resolution, that no matter how much one can get over it and move on, that pain will always exist. I much more appreciated the earlier-mentioned aspect, that life shapes you and you shape it. I would rather focus on this idea and less on some fantasy-based notion that everything is going to be alright.

That said, great, great show. This was a top level performance, and with all apologies to Clark theater people (my brother, really, not the ones who went on to illustrious reality show careers), this was far and away the best high school theater I've seen. Having that level of talent collected in one institution is nothing short of incredible - and let's keep in mind that these heights were achieved by a *student director.* I can't say this enough - big, big congratulations to Danielle; you pulled off something tremendous.

And not to short it - the later show, This is a Test, was excellent and very, very funny as well. It's lead, Austin, pulled off his own tour-de-force of paranoid, frenetic anxiety that was sidesplitting. My SASI student Josh played a hilarious send up of evil, pretentious teachers everywhere. SO it was great, too, but I was just blown away by WaW.