Love Song
Narrative rules are so well established, so deeply ingrained, that it seems there can be little more satisfying than identifying a problem and neatly solving it. Playwright John Kolvenbach appears to be on board with the formula in his comedy Love Song, but then sees fit to take his quirky, character-driven story in whatever direction it aims to go, and the result is a markedly unexpected — and deftly unique — night of theater. In this Planet Ant Theatre production, director Inga Wilson fosters a sweet and light tone that balances out the gravity of a story of real mental anguish.
To say that Beane (Ty Mitchell) is quiet would be an understatement. He’s antisocial to a fault, plagued by some kind of uncertainty that he’s getting life wrong — he doesn’t get the same enjoyment from food that others seem to, for example, and thus he’s uninclined to eat. His sister, Joan (Annabelle Young), and her husband, Harry (Stephen Blackwell), feel responsible for him, worried more so. Deciding whether and how to interverene in his welfare is clearly weighing on all three, until something amazing happens: a sardonic, malicious thief (Sarah Switanowski) breaks into Beane’s apartment, then lies in wait to give him a piece of her mind. As it happens, she is captivated (yet angrily disbelieving) that he has so little in the way of possessions — her greatest thrill is to discover and destroy the impersonal objects people give treasured places in their homes and pore over the extremely personal ones they hide away, a dichotomy that only seems to grow more polarized with increasing wealth. Her name is Molly; she gets to the very center of Beane; he loves her instantly. To the playwright’s credit, the ensuing plot is not solely concerned with his potential craziness at this development, but also with his happiness, and gives equal credence to the ramifications of both.
The nuanced perspective is aided by the fact that the viewer can see things from Beane’s point of view, in the form of ingenious production values. A claustrophobic set by Tommy LeRoy illustrates just how real his suffocating impairment feels. Dyan Bailey’s crowded sounds are piled onto an inescapable loop that pays literal and figurative attention to the text and the developing story. Designer Kevin Barron uses direct overhead lighting to amp up the isolation; the trade-off is that faces aren’t especially visible in some scenes, but in a space this small, the performers’ choices are still evident. And indeed, these are choices that expertly suit the world of the play: Mitchell splits hairs between the passive “dead inside” and the active “painstakingly inconspicous,” betraying a wealth of deliberation and hopelessness behind a forlorn exterior as still as glass. Switanowski, as the dangerous agent of his emotional awakening, clings to Molly’s fixations at the exclusion of all else, but the enigmatic details of her life beyond Beane’s reach are easily pushed aside by the shorthand strangeness of their indulgent chemistry.
As the oddball Beane’s comparatively normal sounding board, Young and Blackwell are an intense, pleasantly bickering, rule-adherent couple. However, in light of Beane’s transformation, they also take a little vacation from themselves, falling back into a kind of infatuation and recklessness that speaks well of the characters and pushes them to add dimension. Here, although Blackwell capably balances combativeness with affection and Young lets a welcome softness underlie her scenes of alcohol-soaked inundation, as a pair, their energies actually seem too in sync. Joan’s character is written with definitive homicidal intensity, yet when contrary Harry matches her spar for spar, the whole of her terrifying extremity doesn’t stand out like it wants to. As a contrast to Beane’s world, it makes sense that the two would consistently operate on a single, severe level, but their own curiously written growth has a cartoonish unevenness as a result.
Rolling along for an uninterrupted ninety minutes, Love Song lovably zigs, then zags, then shoots right off the alphabet into uncharted territory. The contrast between earnestly special Beane and his comic-relief family unfairly prioritizes some developments over others, but this doesn’t detract from a succession of climactic scenes that are modestly breathtaking and ripe with surprise. In all, this production has a darling sense of humor suggestive of easy fixes and smooth sailing, but an enchanting underbelly of complexity delivers more.
September 23, 2011