This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
There’s a time-honored tradition in story craft of raising the stakes on an already tense situation by plopping your protagonists on a boat in the middle of risky waters. “Anything Goes.” “Titanic.” “The Mosquito Coast.” “Jaws.” “The Shark Is Broken,” last year’s Broadway show about the making of “Jaws.” And “Moby Dick” — the “Jaws” before there was “Jaws.” That’s the tradition from which Alabama-raised playwright Audrey Cefaly’s ”The Gulf” has been wrought.
The two-person dark comedy/drama first premiered in Washington, D.C., in 2016 and, indeed, there is one extremely dated and quaint-by-comparison Trump reference about building walls (Truly it was a more innocent time). The show is now making its Georgia debut at Out Front Theatre in a short run through March 30.
The folks being dumped into a watery purgatory this time are dysfunctional couple Kendra (Daryl Lisa Fazio) and Betty (Jamie Goss), who’ve been together so long they’ve forgotten why they ever liked each other, now six years after a fateful, bead-laden Mardi Gras meet-cute. The bon temps have not rouler’ed in quite a while, it seems, except for glimmers of attraction that crop up in fits of antagonism. It’s basically young, hot George and Martha on the bayou.
Credit: Photo by Sydney Lee
Credit: Photo by Sydney Lee
We start out, placidly enough, on a fishing trip. The more outgoing of the two, Betty, is incessantly chatty — gossiping about their cat lady neighbor and (hilariously) reading excerpts from the career self-help book “What Color Is Your Parachute?” — mostly as a way of passive-aggressively calling her longtime squeeze out for not having ambition or the right kind of job.
“You could be an astronaut!” Betty says.
“That sounds like work,” Kendra shoots back.
Kendra, the captain of the fishing vessel they’re on, is more stoic, almost to the point of seeming bored by everything. Though, as we find out, those still waters hide a raging torrent underneath.
Director K. Parker has placed the two literally at odds with one another — at opposite ends of the boat for most of the play — which puts a somewhat too-fine point on the fact that the gulf of the title refers not only to its location in the shallows of the ‘Bama delta but to the gaping chasm between what these two want from each other and life.
The swampy sounds by Kait Rivas, golden hour lighting design by Beate M. Czogalla and a wicked yet whimsical set by Sof Delgado allow one’s mind to imagine the alligators and snakes lurking just beneath the surface of the painted waterway. But, alas, those gators, metaphorical and literal, just never show up to bare their teeth.
Which brings us to the most difficult aspect of this piece, which is the lack of payoff when all the elements of a superb show are there. Compelling characters with a complex and troubled history together. Actors who are fully committed to their parts. Throughout the 90 or so minute runtime of “The Gulf,” we are led like Charlie Brown to the football, toward what we feel will be a major event — a personal crisis, a Category 5 hurricane picking up speed somewhere offshore.
And, yet, that storm, that revelation that knocks the wind out of one or both characters’ sails, that pivotal change that may alter their course from where they began . . . never arrives.
Credit: Photo by Sydney Lee
Credit: Photo by Sydney Lee
Like the boat itself, which gets stuck on a tree root and refuses to dislodge, we mostly stew in the same icy water, uncomfortably waiting for a release that never comes. You can sense the writing tip-toeing toward a precipice of some major character development choice or pivotal action that might propel the story forward. But, each time, the script backs away.
And, honestly, the more the full scope of this show has had time to sink in since I attended, the more I have hypothesized that this may have been a deliberate choice from Cefaly — a kind of withholding of the gratification of a full narrative arc in the same way that so often we keep going in situations that may have seemed untenable at first but now feel more excruciating to extract.
The murky stakes of “The Gulf” are disorienting. It’s unclear who you should be rooting for and what you should be hoping for. Do we want them to break up? Do we want them to murder each other? Or, well, do we just resign ourselves to the fact that often people take the easiest way out, which is by not getting out at all? By not making decisions that result in real consequences?
On the plus side, the geography and the small-town claustrophobia tied to the winding southern shores of the Yellowhammer State have been rendered in ways that are refreshingly specific and lived in — which means that even if Betty especially can feel over the top sometimes, her experiences and ambitions are never patronizing. The dialogue feels pulled from real life in a way that isn’t often encountered in depictions of this region. In a nice touch, they reference real landmarks that sound made up. Dog River and Fowl River. A bar called Flora-Bama.
Cefaly is an accomplished playwright with a knack for realistic-sounding dialogue and characters who are rooted in experiences and identities that don’t often have this much nuance. Which is why it’s flummoxing that the fishing-trip-gone-awry domestic melodrama doesn’t sink its hooks all the way in. At almost 90 minutes with no intermission, the lack of purposeful acceleration can feel at times like we are the trawler, slowly moving along the river’s floor. We’re an audience that wants to be caught — why release us instead?
THEATER REVIEW
“The Gulf”
Through March 30 at Out Front Theatre Company. 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and Monday, 3 p.m. Sunday. 999 Brady Ave. N.W. $15-$25. 404-448-2755, outfronttheatre.com.
::
Alexis Hauk has written and edited for numerous newspapers, alt-weeklies, trade publications and national magazines, including Time, The Atlantic, Mental Floss, Uproxx and Washingtonian. Having grown up in Decatur, Alexis returned to Atlanta in 2018 after a decade living in Boston, Washington, D.C., New York City and Los Angeles. By day, she works in health communications. By night, she enjoys covering the arts and being Batman.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
MEET OUR PARTNER
ArtsATL (artsatl.org) is a nonprofit organization that plays a critical role in educating and informing audiences about metro Atlanta’s arts and culture. ArtsATL, founded in 2009, helps build a sustainable arts community contributing to the economic and cultural health of the city.
If you have any questions about this partnership or others, please contact Senior Manager of Partnerships Nicole Williams at nicole.williams@ajc.com.
About the Author
