Playwright: Alexander Holt
At: The Narcissists at Breadline Studio
Phone: ( 312 ) 409-3910; $15
Runs through: May 28
Anyone with a taste for rich and pungent language coupled with theatrical flair should hurry to see Remembering the Future, 10 brief monologs by Alexander Holt, well performed by Ryan Colwell with his off-beat boyish looks and flexible voice. As good as Colwell is, skillfully directed by Weil Richmond, the brilliance belongs to Holt. Serious of purpose if not quite profound, his craftsmanship is dazzling; albeit these short portraits don't require the more complex structure of a play.
Colwell portrays eight men and two women, all despairing, destructive youngish adults in crisis, given to venting, self-pity, self-justification and dependency on drugs and/or alcohol and/or sex. But in Holt's sexual universe—sometimes highly graphic and sometimes merely suggestive—sex is power or punishment or self-loathing or a substitute for self-esteem. When sex becomes loving or caring, Holt's subjects 'find holes in the happiness,' as one puts it.
Given this unhappy lot, it's amazing what color and power, what poetry and musical grace, what varied and vigorous vocabulary, what keen observation Holt musters in his ever-changing verbal barrage. Delivered in 70 tight minutes, there's little elaboration but plenty of punch.
A composer seeking musically to capture 'the sweat in the subway' delivers an urban imagery riff worthy of a poetry slam, then laments, 'Nothing can be original anymore, only new.'
A swaggering Latino alpha male delivers a blistering sex screed filled with lubricious, detailed descriptives of male and female parts and violent copulation. Following women of all ages just to 'inhale their pelvic energy,' his obsession voiced in Holt's kaleidoscopic sexual scatology is astonishing.
Among other portraits, there's a cross-dressing serial killer whose mother hears only the voice of the little boy he once was. Also, a druggie party girl who brings men home nightly, calling each 'this foreign entity invading my bedroom, this scandal I've invited in.' Also: a gay man who murders his lover, a tale of romance in a New York blackout, and a young man who's sweet childhood memories sour as he repeats his father's alcoholism and confronts his own ordinariness.
Remembering the Future is the debut production of The Narcissists, who believe 'in theater as a form of therapy for both the audience and the actors,' according to the troupe's statement, and whose goal is 'to have audience members be able to identify a vice or virtue within themselves ... .' The vices run rampant in this debut, in which self-absorbed characters both repel and fascinate. Colwell's astute, sometimes-threatening performance is augmented by Daemon Hatfield's original music and Laura Marshall's well-selected, witty slides. But one hopes The Narcissists understand that change can be wrought through positive example, too. Even Darth Vader wasn't always on the Dark Side.