Theatre Review: Leaves of Glass

Part of the problem of trying to be young and good is that sometime the two don’t always commensurate as bedfellows. My stuff usually bends reality into meta-reality, writing about writing or performing about performing. In this case, I’m fortunate enough to be a contemporary of these performers … and know their personalities on and off the stage. Emerging talent bring honest toil to their work. That’s what excites me about writing a review like this (and where the meta – [x] comes in) – I’ll call myself an emerging writer – emerging from what I don’t know – but fortunate to begin reviews of performances with peers I’ve known for years. Why distance myself? Since I wasn’t paid to write this review (though I felt the pending haste to have a matching, independent review go up last night) means I can write the following:

Briefly: Opening night left me with a few questions to the direction Geoff Conklin was trying to go with the piece – and whether the nuance of the work left too much to subtlety by the young actors and actresses (young meaning anything less than 30 to me) who couldn’t quite explain to the audience without words their character’s inner secrets. The 30 or so people in attendance were left to figure out the motifs – candles, stars, ghosts and rats for themselves. Such intricate portrayal of death got too wrapped up in a twisted sense of grief and disbelief. Conklin’s direction had its moments of clarity, as did its performers. The only sense of rhythm the audience got came from reminders the play spanned about nine months -- we find out that Debbie, played by Ashlee Hartwig, is pregnant, much to the shock, or lack thereof, to the male lead, Steven, played by Reistad. This is another strength of Conklin’s: Steven’s melancholy over the news of his forthcoming child sets the sense of the twisted truth of this play – who is telling it, who hears it, and who synthesizes a new one in their own mind to appeal to their sense of dealing with grief. Shannon Smith, playing Liz, shined through as female co-lead for me in one scene: look for it as she rationalizes the flooey bug and tidies up the flat, removing the metaphorical sickness from the place.

More: I’ve got notes noting Paul Brissett’s presence next to me, my closest neighbor in the second row, making notes in his notebook about the performance. You can read his review here. I probably took a lot more notes of the Duluth Playground’s Leaves of Glass from last night’s opener than Brissett but I’m still a student of theatre reviews myself … bear with it.

Watching Reistad perform in such a serious role through the first act was difficult for me as a peer to watch. To master the British accent and maintain his “thousand-yard stare,” was challenging. He’s forced to play a state of mind: dealing with a baby on the way and the unraveling of grief over his father’s death. He swayed in and out of accents a few times, I forgive him; (“Get into character Blake!” I wrote down once). To me, there was too much subtlety in the mannerisms of the other performers around him to let him truly unleash his dramatic power in the first act.

With the second act, Steven’s character required a bout with a bit of “the flooey bug” to give Reistad the impetus he needed to pull the play back on track. Here, we see his talent as an actor: Dynamic enough to be cowering in a dark cellar, fighting an imaginary ghost before the birth of his child, rescued from the delirium by his brother, only to manipulatively twist the truth around on Barry to make the entire truth of death and birth seem so convincingly to not be of his matter or memory at all. It is all part of an internal war Steven is battling over the loss of his father: how to conceive of truth and versions of death, in their own way? Was the death an accident? A strong gust of wind, as Steven monologued, or was it suicide, as per Barry’s (Scott Mallace) version of the truth?

Barry has a different kind of memory – that of a romantic, a renaissance man born to the wrong era. He sees things differently after his father’s death at 35. It is part of his character’s evolution; his cope with death. He moans in his own vomit to begin the play, a courier of birth to the end as he’s sobered up and sold his artwork, though crashes to a tragic conclusion to further complicate the grief of the small family. Mallace is spot on in the hauntingly, inadvertent way looks at his fellow performers – though, even then, not really. The same goes for the audience. It makes us question his veracity as a character– part of the core message of the play.

Tension between the female leads – Mother Liz (Shannon Smith), Debbie (Ashlee Hartwig) is not clear to me. Nor does the mannerism of Debbie seem to make much sense: she seems static in a character she opened with – griping about Steven’s lack of excitement about the child, chilled by the limp salad she tries to eat under a light too bright in a scene where she discusses eroticism. The act of turning the light off, on, off and back on seems to suit her as a character. Hot, cold; bright, dark and can’t seem to make up her mind. It doesn’t seem to transcend anything of value for the audience. She’s just plain grumpy for no reason – the audience can see the dynamics of the other characters around her and the strain it puts upon her, but she makes no intention of removing herself from it.

Go, but prepare to get things twisted around: the issue of memory and grief within a family is at the heart of this play. Whose version of the convoluted events is most correct? The mother, (who in Barry’s words, is “a lying, manipulative, two-faced cow?”) or his own? A recovering alcoholic, to whom truth was day to day? The successful businessman, Steven? His close relationship with Liz (and he admits in a monologue of his mother’s preference of him, Barry of the late father) leads the audience to question his every motive and manipulation of his brother. Give your family a hug when you return from this play to comfort your mind; revel in the fact that they themselves probably haven’t already jumped in the Thames.