Rooms Without A View

 

                Lee Blessing's 1988 play, "TWO ROOMS," deals with subject matter to which most audiences may have difficulty relating. Afterall, how many of us can say we've been a hostage...for three years...in Beirut?

                Dramatic productions of this sort can quickly slide down a slippery slope into last-season-of-M*A*S*H schmaltz or into a preachy, "and-now-here's-Tom-Hanks-with-TO-LEARN-MORE-ABOUT-IT" quagmire.  And that's fine, if you're just flipping channels and come across "NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER" on the LIFETIME network.  There's worse ways to spend 1.2 nanoseconds of your life before you change the channel.

                To explore the subject of a man kept captive by terrorists while governments, the American press and the man's wife fight a pitched battle of ideas, emotions, and conflicting goals--and to do so in a way that is both meaningful and entertaining to an audience for two hours--is a daunting task. Fortunately, Blessing is a considerable talent with more than 50 plays to his credit, and the Everyman specializes in producing works that make you think, laugh, and as my play companion did, cry.

                "TWO ROOMS" opens with Clinton Brandhagen as Michael Wells, on his knees in an empty room, blindfolded, clothes torn and tattered, his lip broken, trying desperately to keep his mind active and free of despair by ruminating on his wife's...toes. And sea turtles. And brine shrimp. His wife's a naturalist, and she's clearly had an influence on him...as his circumstances have influenced her.

                Lainie (Dawn Ursula) wants so much to connect with her missing husband, she's removed everything from his home office except for a matt to recreate as best she can what her husband is experiencing--a world devoid of everything except pain.  Occasionally this illusion is disrupted by the appearance of Ellen (Deborah Hazlett), the seemingly-divided U.S. government representative, who feels for Lainie, wants to help her, but is held back by the constraints of her position.

                There's a scene where Ellen narrates over a slideshow of bombed buildings, young Middle Easterners armed with grenade launchers and AK-47s, for revolution is the only way they can express their anger at the life they are forced to lead and their desire to have what we in America take for granted-food, shelter, safety, peace.  For Ellen, life is about taking a stand against the forces that do not so much wish to destroy us, as REPLACE us.  She is adamant, dedicated and committed...as is Lainie, to achieving her husband's rescue, as is Walker (Tim Getman) to exposing what he sees is as the inequitable trade of human lives for political power.  

                How each character works with and against each other, as their philosophies dovetail and clash, is the conflict that energizes the play and carries the audience from scene to scene toward an inevitability all hope (the audience included) can somehow be avoided.

                No one wears a black hat in this play, not even the terrorists who are never seen, beyond the slide show. Each character is sincere in their commitment to their cause which they each see as the ultimate good-to destroy international terrorism, to expose government hypocrisy, to bring a loved one home.

                Blessing's script is quite poetic, and the cast are clearly pleased to be working with such material. Lines like "why do women love eyes so much?" (Why DO they?); "without hope, there can be no foreign policy"; and a tale of the cuckoo and the warbler that manages to say so much about the nature of Hope, God, Natural Selection, and a woman's unfathomable pain...well, you won't ever watch the DISCOVERY Channel in quite the same way again.

                As is typical of an Everyman production, the stagework is excellent--use of light and music, and set design (particularly how a single door is placed center stage through which no one enters or exits...til the very last scene) all support the play's themes, use of metaphor and each actor's performance.

                TWO ROOMS, directed by Vincent Lancisi, continues its run at the Everyman, 1727 N. Charles Street, through Feb. 21^st. For tickets, call 410-752-2208 or visit www.everyman.theatre.org.

 

 

 

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