Playwright: Brian Golden. At: New Leaf Theatre at the Lincoln Park Cultural Center, 2045 Lincoln Park West. Phone: 773-980-6391;$15-$25. Runs through: Oct. 29
Brian Golden's plays are most widely known through (albeit not exclusive to) the Theatre Seven collective's anthologized showcases, making this 80-minute solo effort a lengthy proposal. Ironically, the extra narrative time does not prevent us being left with unanswered questions.
In 1979, we are told, Ms. Patricia Russell was crowned Miss America, but rather than taking advantage of this honor to forge a more cosmopolitan life, she returned to her home town of Grand Island, Nebraska, there lending her celebrity presence to social events leaving her little time for attending to her progeny. The son we know only as "Boxer" fled the shadow of his mother's social status with a music scholarship to Berkeley, soon after emigrating to New York City in pursuit of a career as a jazz trumpeter, while daughter Jean stayed behind to care for her aged parent and raise her own out-of-wedlock infants. Now, after years of silence, the siblings confront each other at the funeral of this formidable matriarch.
The walnut-paneled room serving as New Leaf Theatre's auditorium, dominated by a white casket surrounded by floral tributes and topped with a diamond tiara, could almost be the setting for a genuine memorial service. The absence of guests apart from the dutiful Jean and the tardy Boxer makes for contemplative pauses in their discourse, allowing us time to notice the conspicuous lack of information regarding the fathers of the Russell clan and their contribution to the filial malaise engendering Jean's inertia and Boxer's restlessness. If this were a depression-era populist drama, the family's isolation might be plausible, but not in our age of mass communication, widespread mobility and available birth control.
Ted Evans and Marsha Harman both deliver carefully-wrought performances, given their fuzzy-edged material, but director Jessica Hutchinson has instructed Harman to play Jean's neediness with an emotionally-articulate eloquence reducing Evans' laconic Boxer to an enigma so self-effacing as to barely register as an onstage presence. Hutchinson also displays a propensity for placing Jean and Boxer on opposite sides of the room's bare central expansepresumably to reflect Harman's psychologically motivated advances and Evans' retreats, but also forcing audiences to split their focus, inadvertently leading them to take sides over the conflicting testimonials. These flaws notwithstanding, Golden's dialogue evidences an intriguing tale wanting only liberation from its academic restrictions.