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Wednesday, September 12, 2007
‘Dark Play or Stories for Boys’ @ Actor’s Express
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A -
8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sunday and Sept. 30; 2 p.m. Sept. 23. Through Oct. 6. (Note: contains nudity and adult language.) $22-$27. Actor’s Express, King Plow Arts Center, 887 W. Marietta St. NW Suite J-107. Atlanta. 404-875-1606; 404-607-7469. www.actors-express.com
With Carlos Murillo’s “Dark Play or Stories for Boys,” Freddie Ashley promises to put a scorching imprint on Atlanta’s theatrical landscape.
Coosa Valley Photography
Jimi Kocina and Stephanie Bruno
A lurid and provocative mind-tease of a play that is alternately irresistible and horrifying, “Dark Play” is a sure and welcome signal that the new Actor’s Express artistic director won’t coddle the meek or cowtow to the squeamish.
Ashley, it must be noted, did not program the tingly season opener of the famously edgy 20-year-old ensemble. That was the work of predecessor Bill Fennelly, who left in June after eight months on the job and before putting on a single show.
But Fennelly had already recruited Ashley as guest director of the most talked about play of this year’s Humana Festival of New American Plays — a story of the Internet’s endless capacity for web-weaving and deception — and Ashley’s elegantly conceived debut makes you believe in the silent happy hand of fate.
Maybe they should have just picked this guy in the first place.
Murillo’s creepy tale — based on the real-life case of a Manchester, England, boy who created an elaborate tangle of fictive chat-room personalities in a scheme of seduction — is the dramatic equivalent of a page-turner, all sexy, suspenseful and dangerous. The use of false identities, disguises and masks is an age-old trick of the theater; here the playwright sharpens the tactic by spinning it from the fantastically devious mind of a lustful teen run amok in a digital game of manipulation and self-destruction.
The proverbial spider is a wispy androgynous blond named Nick (Jimi Kocina), and his fly is the stupendously gullible Adam (Brent Rose), who makes the near-fatal error of placing a personal ad on the Internet. Nick not only manufactures the girl of Adam’s dreams — but a swirling galaxy of supporting players as well.
This sick little story is the sort of stuff that will cause parents to cringe at the thought of what happens at night in their children’s bedrooms: web-cam exhibitionism, sleepovers stoked by Absolut mandarin — and the inevitable scars of damaged hearts and souls.
Thankfully, Murillo never places his characters in front of a laptop, and no simulated type is frantically pecked out on an overhead projector posing as a computer monitor. Instead, Nick narrates the whole sordid episode as memory and flashback — prompted by a question from latest conquest, Molly (the lovely Stephanie Bruno). He sometimes participates in this roundelay and sometimes watches it from the sidelines, striking a pose from his messy bed or shooting the audience a knowing look.
The cast — which features John Benzinger and Stacy Melich in a variety of “netizen” roles (think: Internet citizens) — is uniformly fine, although Melich had an alarming, out-of-character moment of fumbled lines on opening night.
Kocina’s performance is mesmerizing, an act of total immersion into the psyche of Nick, and Rose deploys a precocious arsenal of details to suggest his character’s blind desire and unquestioning acceptance.
Though the playwright sometimes pushes the limits of believability and turns Nick’s catharsis into an annoyingly repetitive gimmick, “Dark Play” is an utterly exhilarating theatrical sensation, best summed up in two words: Hold me.
Bottom Line: An electric roundelay of digitally manipulated sex, deception and near-death — and a nervy triumph for new artistic director Freddie Ashley.
