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Writing for Us
A CurtainUp Review
Pyretown
By Brad Bradley
Deirdre O'Connell & Christopher Thornton
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Harry is a bright, capable young man who recently has been confined to a wheelchair because of a tragic accident. Louise is a single and nearly manic mother who amazingly describes herself as "over-happy." She recently escaped "a really mean drunk" of a husband and is apprehensive about her oncoming middle age; nevertheless she remains a vibrant and spirited individual even as she lives on life’s margins. Chance encounters between the two in a supermarket and a hospital emergency room comfortably lead to a mutually caring relationship that perhaps is best described as a special, while limited, friendship.
Writer John Belluso’s script makes the pair extraordinarily appealing even as their personality limitations become disturbingly apparent. The dialogue is crisp, bright, and engaging. However, the characters, for all of their natural gifts, cannot move forward. Harry remains an intellectual dilettante, and Louise can’t seem to overcome battered wife syndrome. The rise and fall of their relationship is believable, yet just misses a satisfying happy ending as they both return to the miserable limitations of the past.
What keeps Harry and Louise stuck in their respective ruts? We hear Harry declaim about survival of the fittest and social Darwinism, yet as someone who clearly knows how to "work the system," one is left surprised at his inability to use his natural skills to greater effect. Louise, a natural victim herself, could use Harry’s skills to better enable her. In fact, she does positively respond to his encouragement that she enroll in a community college biology course. Yet she quickly gives up on him when he miscalculates and becomes enraged on an essential telephone conference she must have with an unavoidable medical bureaucrat.
The two actors are superb. Deirdre O’Connell is magnetic in her every move, imbuing her downtrodden character with a constantly compelling charisma. Christopher Thornton’s approach and character are more subtle, but his Harry is no less engaging. Playing a promising young man whose potentials were seriously circumscribed by his mother’s early death to cancer and his own paralyzing accident, actor Thornton’s own equally young life has had a similar challenge: performing in a wheelchair is something he already has done for numerous roles, his own paraplegia having stalled his career only temporarily.
The concept of paralysis, both physical psychological, is central to Belluso’s script, for the characters, as interesting as they both are, seem to suffer from frozen nerves, so to speak. Their vivid energy and life-affirming natures sadly are overruled by their inability to overcome their individual central limitations. Happily, the performers, whether encumbered by limitations of accident, age, or script, happily transcend all difficulties. Their work alone makes Pyretown a decidedly worthwhile theatrical journey.
Carl Forsman’s efficient and uncluttered direction enhance as usual, but he strangely has permitted his lighting designer sometimes to light up the theater’s back wall and utility pipes to distracting effect. Otherwise, the various parts of the stage usefully are lit selectively to serve as tight mini-stages for the minimally suggested settings of home, market, hospital, and elsewhere. Bridge music between scenes also an asset, although the pre-show atmosphere goes overboard in volume.
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Pyretown Written by John Belluso Directed by Carl Forsman Cast: Deirdre O’Connell (Louise) and Christopher Thornton (Harry). Set Design: Nathan Heverin Costume Design: Theresa Squire Lighting Design: Josh Bradford Sound Design: Stefan Jacobs Keen Company at Urban Stages, 259 West 30th Street 212/868-4444 Running time: 90 minutes (no intermission). From 1/25/05 to 2/20/05; opening 1/29/05 Tuesday to Saturday at 8; Sunday at 2. Viewed by Brad Bradley at the Thursday, January 27 preview. |
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Retold by Tina Packer of Shakespeare & Co.
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Leonard Maltin's 2005 Movie Guide
Ridiculous!The Theatrical Life & Times of Charles Ludlam
6, 500 Comparative Phrases including 800 Shakespearean Metaphors by CurtainUp's editor.
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