Review: SONNETS FOR AN OLD CENTURY at Spooky Action

Watching eight talented and skilled actors compete with the places in which they've been asked to work makes up one of the audience experiences during the 90 minutes of Sonnets for an Old Century by Obie Award-winner José Rivera. In Spooky Action's production, which runs through June 25, the actors often perform in the dark so the audience cannot see the work; sometimes the show moves into spaces with such compromised acoustics that more of the script is echo than words. And the other audience experience consists of hiking up and down the staircases of the 3-storey church building where Spooky Action has a suitable black box space (which it only uses for the ninth performance--a nifty video of Rivera himself, performing one of the monologues by the characters about their lives). The notion that the church's smelly basement kitchen contributes to a play, an actor, and/or an audience mystifies.

Most of the characters have unsettling but engrossing stories to tell. Their vantage-points seem to take place after their deaths, but each one has been brought to what would have been vivid life by this group of fine actors if nearly all of them were not so frequently almost invisible. Gabby Wolfe recalls the cruelty of her character's father; Victor Salinas re-lives that of his. Jamil Joseph's character movingly recollects becoming a father and discovering the joy and fun of that before disaster strikes. Kay-Megan Washington eloquently portrays a mother up against an inept school principal and the indifference of her beloved son who disdains her efforts to share with him the family's Guyanese heritage because it isn't connected to pro-basketball. Jared Graham captures the rage of a man destroyed by addiction who can compassionately describe his father's final illness and death, but who cannot and will not be present for him. Raghad Almakhlouf harnesses the disturbed psyche of a woman who only finds peace in her fantasies and cannot find a normal life. Jolene Mafnas embodies the confusion of a character who knows that astronomy is science, but who feels equally attracted to science fiction. The sensational Lisa Hodsoll plays a socially isolated California woman who connects with a neighbor and a spectacular sunset (visualized by Lighting Designers Mike Durst and Helen Garcia-Alton) brought to life by air pollution (like a week ago Thursday--remember when DC turned orange?) Hodsoll masterfully turns Rivera's monologue for her character into a little three-act play: first, describing the bland and solitary life of a single, Lightin' Hopkins-loving woman; next, glorying in wonder as the sunset forms; and then, relaxing into the joy of companionship.

Director Elizabeth Dinkova, the new Artistic Director of Spooky Action, will surely raise the profile of this spunky, off-beat, earnest theatre company; Rivera's sensitive and eloquent play deserves a production which illuminates it beyond what excellent actors can do in dark rooms. As it is, Dinkova has made it seem more like radio.