Playwright: Alex Lubischer. At: Fine Print Theatre Company at Red Tape Theater 773, 621 W. Belmont Ave. Tickets: thefineprinttheatre.org or www.brownpapertickets.com; $20-25. Runs through: April 4
The language we use when we talk about bullying, especially as it relates to issues of sexual orientation, can be so bogged down by platitudes. Messages of standing up and speaking out and yes, even "it gets better," start to detach themselves from the reality of the sordid situations they aim to end.
The Xylophone West, a new play by Alex Lubischer from the Fine Print Theatre Company, is an LGBT-related play about bullying that's least concerned with LGBT-related bullying. The main character's sexuality is a matter of little import; the play focuses on the way he chooses to handle his adversity, how he confronts his peers and how he elects to move forward.
Patrick (played by Donnie Sheldon) has had trouble fitting in at school. After some other kids going out for the basketball team bully him and break his arm, he conspires with his only friend, Shane (David Weiss), to hop a train to California, except an accident forces him to stay and confront the situation.
Lubischer takes a much more physical and grittier approach to this topic than one might expect, especially given the surface-level similarities to The Laramie Project. Both stories take place in small, conservative communities, but that's where it ends. The amount of movement, along with Patrick's volatile personality, adds some powerful tension and suspense to the story. In doing so, it explores the psychology involved in an abusive situation and forces the audience to dig deep in terms of how we would truly and honestly handle the physical and emotional grind Patrick endures.
So we're not treated to the expected tropes of a repressive and ignorant community or the traumas of being closeted or questioning one's self. All those issues hover around the drama and in some ways probably intensify it, but the play is about doing, what the characters—both victim and perpetrators—do when they must face the issue instead of flee, run away or change schools.
While watching plays we feel a validation of the themes and subject matter based on the dialogue, when the playwright delivers the issues at hand in a verbally mainstreamed sort of way. So there's a bit of discomfort in Lubischer's near refusal to use that familiar language, but it seems to have a point. Even for all the use of the word "faggot" in the play, Patrick says "retarded" on a few occasions, as if to diminish the emphasis on hate language, period.
The notion of action in The Xylophone West goes all the way from the execution to the thematic core. There's even a violence to the scene transitions. All of this is quite a feat for a story so wrapped up in the psychology of its characters.
This play doesn't necessarily add to the dialogue about LGBT bullying; it's more of a reminder of the harsh realities and consequences of such abuse and how challenging it is to meet this issue face to face. In a sense, it calls for a re-examination—to look at bullying with new eyes and recall what it actually is and how it might more productively be stopped.
