Review: DRUNKEN CITY at The Cell

After several months of doing these reviews, I'm becoming familiar with the majority group that attends theater in Albuquerque: Retirees. This is unfortunate for a show like Drunken City, which is about young people. I know it's bad form for me to critique the audience, but frankly I'm tired of watching actors pour their hearts out to the same small demographic. The Cell, where Duke City Repertory is performing this show, is just two blocks from the Central nightclub strip full of young people. Can that crowd please attend the theater too? Tickets are less expensive than a couple drinks, and there's catharsis instead of a hangover.

Besides, here is a play that shines a light on your exact ritual, O young people: The 'night out on the town.' And this is not just any night out-this is the bachelorette party, the supposed-last wild ritual before marriage. After this night, the bachelorettes will belong to the next phase of their lives. Are they ready to take that step?

The discord and chaos that emerges from their drunken revelry-which director Ezra Colon composes with realistic brash and bombast-indicates no, they may not be ready. As each woman sinks into uninhibited inebriation, they all must face the ugly force of their own fear. And each actor chooses uniquely, so fear is different for each character and the ensemble's impact is a broad and varied: From a wide range of angles, complex humans grapple with the implications of the institution of marriage.

Marnie, the bachelorette for whom this party has been thrown, carries the most weight in this struggle-she's reluctant to be a bride. Her reluctance is, initially, invisible amid the status quo of her friends' whooping excitement. But when Marnie gets a moment alone, actress Katie Becker Colon plunges into her depth of insecurity with the subtlest silence-bitten-lip, searching eyes, the kind of intimate moment of heartbreaking loneliness which the theater exists to expose.

The irony of this play is that though it maintains the tone of a wild, sloppy party, its life is really in these choice silences. Opposite Marnie in her uncertainty, there is Melissa-played by Ashley Daniels-who refuses to question the institution of marriage, even in the face of her own fiancee's rejection. Through several brash confrontations, Melissa builds toward a steely ruthlessness; actress Daniels brings a wide-range throughout, but most to her credit is that her final punctuation of antagonism is wordless-a devastating gesture of her stilettos.

Perhaps there's a lesson in this effectiveness of silence, especially when Eddie (played by Frank Taylor Green) and Bob (played by Josh Heard), two peripheral characters who begin merely as the quintessential wingmen, steal the focus from underneath the noisy plot with a relatively quiet interaction that seems to deliver the essence of the play. As they keep out of the center to patiently support the central story, they nevertheless manage to win the audience's affection. This behavior seems to express an alternative ritual to the wild-and-crazy party: Simple, gentle conversation.

Yet there is a power in the party-which Linda, the divinity school drunkard played with mystic comedy by Amelia Ampuero, evokes as 'the dragon of the city'-a power which tilts the bachelorettes' world, and shakes-off the 'bachelorette' title so each must stand exposed as mere humans and reconsider: in the face of this power, can they call their choices true?

This question is ultimately beneficial, but highly unsettling-which is why I really think young people should see this show. Because sooner or later, O young people, the night-out ritual amid Central's clubs might go over the top. And then the question will be upon you. That's why this show is here, playing just down the street from the club-to prepare you, in a strong seventy-minute cocktail of humor and heart, for when you too wake the dragon.

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