[NEohioPAL] Berko review: STRANDED ON EARTH @ Mamai and Theater Ninja

[Roy Berko via NEohioPAL]

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*Derdriu Ring, Jeremy Paul and Eric Coble combine for an evening of thought
provoking intrigue*



Roy Berko

(Member, American Theatre Critics Association, Cleveland Critics Circle)



Eric Coble, a Cleveland Heights-based writer, is the author of the
Alexandra Trilogy.  Each play showcases Alex/Alexa/Alexandra at different
ages and stages of her life.



The series starts with “A Girl’s Guide to Coffee,” which was staged by
Actors’ Summit in their 2012 season.  The plot finds twenty-two year old
Alex, a college grad, working as a barista. Alex’s plan is to have no plan
at all.  But into her life accidentally flows handsome, artistic and
some-time repairman, Christopher, who seems, in his subtle, and often
bumbling way, to have other ideas for Alex’s existence.



“Stranded on Earth,” which finds Alexa, in her 40s, is the second script in
the series, but was written last.  It is presently getting its regional
premiere in a co-production of Mamai Theatre Company and Theater Ninjas.



“The Velocity of Autumn,” which recently had a Broadway run, garnered
Estelle Parsons a Best Acting Tony nomination.  The play had a run at Beck
Center last season, feaqturing a superb Dorothy Silver performance.   Velocity
was the third play in Coble’s Alexandra trilogy.



Velocity found 78-year old Alexandra barricaded in her NY brownstone,
resisting
being put “away” by her children.   She does have slips of memory, her
knees and back hurt, she can no longer hold a paint brush, but she is sharp
enough to know that she doesn’t want to leave her home and go to an
extended care facility.  She thoroughly believes, ‘There are good and bad
ways to die.”



The one-hour, “Stranded on Earth,” an existentialistic exercise, finds
Alexa in a state of emotional distress, “asking why do I exist?”  She’s a
creative artist who finds herself in the midst of midlife chaos.  Everything
has changed.  She isn’t sure where her life went off track and how, or if,
can she get restarted.



As she probes and rants, she creates a Jackson Pollack-like abstract
painting, tossing and splattering paint from above, then wallowing in it
and then traipsing around, blurring the colors to create a final image that
is much like her chaotic thoughts.



Coble’s poetic writing in “Stranded on Earth, in contrast to his sequential
and traditional verbiage of “A Girl’s Guide to Coffee” and “The Velocity of
Autumn” is a little off-setting.  Alexa’s grasping to make things come
together in some logical form not only alludes Alexa, but, at times, the
viewer.



Coble, who lived on Indian reservations as a youth, uses allusions to the
artistic and religious pattern of creating “unfixed sand paintings,” ritual
artistic arrangements which are destroyed or blow away after a ceremony is
finished.



Derdriu Ring is compelling as Alexa.  Hers is an impressive performance.  She
flows in a torrent of torment, unable to find the right colors, blends,
words, images, and clarity to explain to herself, or convey to the viewer,
a clear line that makes us believe that she, and us, will be able to find
our way.



Director Jeremy Paul, the artistic director of Ninja, has helped Ring
develop a mesmerizing performance.



*CAPSULE JUDGEMENT: Mamaí’s mission is “to create intelligent, relevant
classical theatre that offers an artistic home for Cleveland’s theatre
artists, and equal opportunity for women in the professional theatre
community.”  Theater Ninja’s goal is to “reimagine how and why we tell
stories, and help us to create deep, fascinating worlds for the audience to
explore.”  Their production of Eric Coble’s “Stranded on Earth,” with a
master class demonstration of finite acting by Derdriu Ring, well meets
both organization’s purposes*.


Mamaí and Theater Ninja’s STRANDED ON EARTH runs through June 22 at the
Pilgrim Church, 2592 West 14th Street, Cleveland, For tickets go to:
http://www.mamaitheatreco.org

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