[NEohioPAL] Review of Charenton's "Two Rooms" at CPT Bookstore Theater

[marcus at designerglass.com]

Two Rooms
CPT Bookstore Theater
6415 Detroit Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44102

216/631-2727

February 15 - March 8, 2008

Presented jointly by
Charenton Theater and Cleveland Public Theater

Performance Times
7:30 pm Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
3:00 pm Sunday

Tickets
$15 General Admission
$12 Students and Seniors
$10 Thursdays

Play by Lee Blessing
Directed by Jacqi Loewy
Artistic Director Raymond Bobgan

Here it is, Cleveland: the kind of theater so many people say they have to go 
to New York to see, in "Two Rooms", at the CPT Bookstore Theater. CPT´s 
Raymond Bobgan and Charenton Theater´s Jacqi Loewy have done an 
extraordinary thing in combining to produce this play.

Jacqi Loewy´s ideas for the bare stage, the spare direction, and the sparer 
acting are terrific.

Sarah Morton, in what the program unfortunately announces as her "last 
theater gig", plays Lainie Wells, the wife of a hostage taken in Beirut, like a 
shuddering charged wire of grief, her whole body the center of this play. Not a 
moment goes by when she´s onstage that pain and outrage are not clear 
either in a tight repression, a retreat into fantasy, or snarling out at either the 
journalist or the State Department functionary. The first time Morton´s big-cat 
rage leaps out is all the more startling for the way she cages it back up again. 
This is a woman nearly ripped asunder by the demands to keep her anger in 
and to let it out. Morton does a remarkable job. I hope she´ll decide that she 
needs only a little time off, and not an actual "early retirement".

Jeffrey Grover, playing her imprisoned husband, descends from hope to 
resignation, his face and body going progressively from restless to nearly 
catatonic in an excellent piece of acting work. Grover starts the play with a 
large blindfold over his face. His voice is almost disembodied for all that he is 
there center stage. A brave actor who clearly isn´t into the major-ego thing, 
Grover understands that his Michael Wells is the increasingly negative energy 
pole against which Morton, Marcouc, and Beck can spark and flame. Grover´s 
is not a negative energy - he infuses enormous energy into Michael Wells´s 
increasingly hopeless stillness. It´s a really fine performance.

Jason Markouc, plays Walker Harris, a journalist who is trying to get Morton´s 
Lainie Wells to speak out publicly to put pressure on the US government to 
include her husband in "deals" to free him. Markouc gets the journalist´s 
human-tone-deafness, his confused interests in the story (the people in the 
story, his own beliefs about government, and his own part in the story), just 
right. Markouc´s Walker is split between his own ambition and his sympathy 
for Lainie, and Markouc exactly captures Walker´s  awkward inability to be 
both sympathetic and professional at the same time.  It´s really hard to play 
this kind of moral and physical awkwardness because it often looks so real, 
but anyone who´s seen Markouc´s sinous, even lethal grace in other roles will 
recognize this as excellent acting.

Mary Alice Beck has to work the hardest, I think, in this production as Ellen 
Van Oss, the State Department functionary whose job it is to feed Lainie Wells 
disinformation about what the government is doing, or not doing, to free 
Michael. Every line in Beck´s body is up and down except those on her face as 
the functionary wars with the woman. As Jeffrey Grover´s face and body grow 
obviously more and more numb, Mary Alice Beck´s eyes grow more and more 
hollow in her face, and by the end of the play, she has a slight but perceptible 
slump. It´s a wonderful performance of an unsympathetic character.

See this play. It´s relevant, powerful, well-acted, and well-directed. The Detroit 
Shoreway area is well-lighted and easy to get to. What are you waiting for?











 
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