[NEohioPAL] Review of "Swimming in the Shallows" at convergence-continuum

[Bob Abelman]

con-con's 'Swimming in the Shallows' goes nowhere fast 

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review will appear in the Cleveland Jewish News on 5/9/14

 

 

Sigmund Freud was once asked about the psychoanalytic significance of his frequent cigar smoking.  To which he supposedly replied: "'sometimes a good cigar is merely a smoke."   

 

And sometimes a quirky comedy, like Adam Bock's "Swimming in the Shallows" at convergence-continuum, is just a laugh.

 

There is a tendency among serious theatergoers to look for more than what meets the eye in works like "Swimming in the Shallows," as if quirky were code for complex and complexity begs to be dissected for its deeper meaning.  There is no deep meaning in this play.

 

It is also easy to assume that, since the playwright studied at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, this play may be darker than it appears on the surface.  It is not.  And while there is an air of absurdity that permeates this story, Bock is no Beckett.  If he were, "Swimming in the Shallows" would be called "Wading For Godot."

 

The often imaginative, frequently funny but go-nowhere script features six people in relationships that don't work because they get in their own way.  

 

Married couple Barb (Amy Bistok Bunce) and Bob (Robert Branch) have everything they need, but Barb wonders if life would be better if lived with only eight worldly possessions, like a Buddhist monk.  She goes about discarding things, including Bob.

 

Donna (Monica Zach) wants to marry her partner, Carla Carla (Linda Sekanic), but Carla Carla sees Donna's inability to stop smoking as a lack of commitment and her lying about it as a sign of distrust.  

 

Sexually promiscuous Nick (Zac Hudak) falls in love with all the wrong guys, including a mako shark (Ryan Edlinger) he sees swimming at the local aquarium.

 

Lisa L. Wiley's laissez-faire direction, coupled with Cory Molner's imprecise lighting and no frills set design - a platform representing a shark tank and doubling as everything else - reinforce the notion that little more than a quirky good time is happening here.  Even the characters' sexual orientation has no weight or consequence whatsoever and no one blinks an eye at Nick's fondness for fish.  

 

While the play's shallowness is the source of its charm and appeal, it is also its downfall.  This production is as aimless and ends as abruptly and empty-handed as it begins.  

 

WHAT:           "Swimming in the Shallows"

WHERE:        convergence-continuum's Liminis Theatre, 2438 Scranton Rd., Tremont 

WHEN:           Through May 24

TICKETS:      $10 - $15.   Call 216-687-0074 or visit www.convergence-continuum.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20140504/8666b5fe/attachment.htm>