[NEohioPAL] FW: Bravo Doboma!

[Jeff Chapman]

From: media-publish at hotmail.comTo: neohiopal at listserve.comSubject: Bravo Dobama!Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:01:35 -0500


 Immediate Release - Hub City Publications - Akron/Hudson - By Jeff Chapman Playwright:  Sonja Linden At: Cuyahoga Community College Studio Theatre  Dobama Theatre in Association with East Campus Theatre Arts Runs through January 20 at CCC then touring Cleveland.  Contact Dobama for tour information.   There's a wonderful scene in "I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda" the 'remarkable' play produced by Dobama in association with the Theatre Arts Department, Cuyahoga Community College, Eastern Campus.   About three-quarters of the way through this tale of a refugee from the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis of 1994, is the candle lighting scene.  It's virtues exemplify what makes this powerfully moving production work, because it crystallizes the simplicity and emotional charge running through this lean 90-minute play.  In the scene, our heroine, Juliette, who has fled to London after seeing her family massacred and all she's known and loved destroyed, sits in her ascetic hostel room on the anniversary of the deaths of her family.  To commemorate the date, she has before her several small candles.  In turn, she lights each one and says something about each family member who was killed.  The stage is dark, the audience still, and the thoughts she shares about each are simple things:  one was smart, one was beautify...nothing elaborate, nothing cloying or manipulative.  It is the simplicity and demonstration of heart-felt, not contrived emotion, that had everyone watching, sniffling.  With this one scene, so bare and simply rendered, we see into the nearly incomprehensible anguish this young woman feels.  It also helps that the performer, Andrea Belser, has created a character so real and fresh that we immediately love her and empathize with her pain. Director Brian Zoldessy has staged "Young Lady" with a keen sense of pacing and a firm pulse on his characters: their flaws, their hopes, their ambitions, their pain, and their dreams.  In short, he brings this story of the burgeoning relationship between the refugee Juliette and the outreach worker, Professor Simon she has aligned with, to complete and mesmerizing life.  It is one of the most 'remarkable' directorial "pictures" I have seen in a very long time. The worker, played with an air of genteel intellectualism and failure by Scott Miller, dances around attraction and compassion as he coaxes the shy, but strong Juliette to tell her tragic story from her own perspective.  He is absolutely excellent and polished.  Their comings together and pullings apart are the stuff of countless plays, movies, and books, but here it seems fresh and original, probably because of the reverence the performers and director obviously had for the material. This is one of the most beautiful and moving stories I've seen told on a Cleveland stage, and it's not to be missed!

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