[NEohioPAL] REVIEW: Noah Haidle's SMOKEFALL at Ensemble Theatre

[Tom Wachunas]

Remembering the Glory of Living

BY Tom Wachunas 

 

Time present and timepast / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained intime past.

 - T.S Eliot, from “BURNT NORTON” (No. 1 of‘Four Quartets’)

Isn’t it rich? / Are we a pair? / Me here at last on the ground /You inmid-air/Send in the clowns  -  Stephen Sondheim

   There is certainlya conceptual kinship between Noah Haidle’s Smokefalland Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Bothplays are piquant narratives that explore, in varying degrees, the bittersweetdynamics of the ties that bind us to each other, and to simply being alive. ButHaidle’s narrative -  chronicling fourgenerations of a quirky family in Grand Rapids, Michigan – is a much morelayered and complex journey through time. The play is mounted here by Seat ofthe Pants Productions and directed by Craig Joseph, who’s always on thelook-out for powerful, challenging stage literature. He’s found it again. Andagain, he has assembled a superbly accomplished ensemble to articulate it. Theplay is an unflinching conflation of the mundane and the metaphysical, andprofoundly rich in the way it melds together preposterous whimsicality, darkhilarity, and soulful tenderness. 

   Throughout Act 1,the character named Footnote (Andrew Gorell) walks about the stage like aveteran tour guide. He addresses the audience in a finessed attitude of seriousauthority peppered with curiosity and surprise as he voices enumerated annotationson the actions and thoughts of all the other characters.

    We meet the sweet and sensitive Violet (HeidiSwinford), pregnant with twin boys (“mistakes,” Footnote observes). As shecontentedly goes about her daily tasks, she sings gentle songs to them,inviting her family to speak to her unborn “citizens of the heart.”   But the pregnancy has only added to thefragile psychological state of her husband, Daniel (Aaron Brown). He’sdepressed, disillusioned, apparently feeling burdened by the ho-hum of everydayroutines. At one point we see Violet setting the breakfast table, putting downthe cups one by one in a loud rhythm, as if marching, while upstairs at thebathroom sink the dour-looking Daniel - who has no intention of ever returninghome once he leaves for work on this day- slaps his razor on the sharpeningstrap in an equally march-like rhythm. Is this the relentless striding of crueltime? There are other similarly nuanced details in the play, wherein anotherwise ordinary sight or action acquires a deeper symbolism. Footnote tellsus what Daniel whispers to the twins: “Help me remember the glory of living.”  We find out later that the twins hear everyword spoken in this troubled household.

   Meanwhile, BobMcCoy delivers a genuinely affectionate portrait of The Colonel, a widowedcareer army man still very much in love with his departed wife even as hewanders in the mists of dementia. He tells the twins, “God exists. Remember Isaid that…and that the greatest possible act of courage is to love.” And thenthere’s Beauty, 16-year-old daughter of Violet and Daniel, played by KellyStrand. She’s heard the marital arguments, along with her father’s constantlamenting the incessant cost and noise of life in their house. In a very oddact of love and self-sacrifice, she hasn’t uttered a word for the last threeyears, and subsists on a diet of dirt, twigs, and paint. It’s a thoroughlyendearing eccentricity that Strand conveys. In her speechlessness, she lets herprecise body language do the talking, her face a veritable enchanted landscapeof emotional expressivity.

   The play’s mostfantastical scene transpires at the end of Act 1, with Aaron Brown as FetusOne, and our narrator, Andrew Gorell, as Fetus Two. Dressed in garish red plaidsuits like a Vaudeville comic duo, they kick, curl, push, and shove their way(oh, the labor pains!) through ridiculous (or is it miraculous?) in-uterophilosophizing about their impending entry to humanity. In this manic mash-upof Shakespeare, Sondheim, Sartre, and Samuel Beckett, one twin (Brown) isfatalistic and fearful, while the other is all giddy optimism and courage asthe two finally agree to take the plunge, as it were. The scene ends on anunexpectedly shocking note.

   When Act 2 begins,a whole generation has passed. In another of those aforementioned symbolicmoments, we notice that through one of the floated window panes in theelegantly simple set designed by Kevin Anderson and Micah Harvey, the branchesof an apple tree have grown into thefamily house. It’s a new tree, planted to replace the diseased one that oncestood in the same spot in Act 1. The past grown into the present.  Bob McCoy has returned in the role of Johnny,that optimistic twin, now living alone in the family house and seeminglyhaunted - or obsessed – by ideas about genetic determinism he acquired in thewomb. His kitchen floor is strewn with fallen, partially eaten apples; heprunes the invasive branches. He has an estranged son, Samuel (Gorell / FetusTwo), who has visited to reconcile with his father, saying at one point, “You’realone because you drove everyone who cared for you away!” Johnny retorts “Youcan’t outrun a lineage.” 

   Beauty alsoreturns, effusively talking about her 40 years of searching for her father.She’s 95 by now, but still looks 16. Another symbol, or another miracle – toremain young by refusing to abandon familial love? 

   Smokefall is an aptly intriguing titlefor this extraordinary drama. T.S. Eliot used the term in writing about themovement of time in his great poetic swansong, “Four Quartets.” It’s that fogthat can rise in the fading light at close of day, before the dark sets in.Alluring, mysterious, and obscuring all at once, it can be nevertheless acathartic, even sacred time, when past, present, and future join to become asingular, revelatory force. 

    Just like being alive, experiencing Smokefall, the story, requires of us a vigilant attention to the idea of pursuing theredemptive power of love and its potential to reconcile broken, disconnectedhearts. The effort can be exhausting,but also exhilarating. “The attempt is how we live,” as the title of the secondact reminds us. Putting aside all its strange magic and brooding humor for amoment, here’s theatre that is ultimately, lovingly...real.

 

PHOTOS by Aimee Lambes

 

SMOKEFALL / showson August 9, 10, 11, 2019 /

Friday and Saturday at 8 PM / Sunday at 2 PM /

At The Playground at Ensemble Theatre, 2843 WashingtonBoulevard, Cleveland Heights 44118 / Tickets $20 at:

 Noah Haidle's SMOKEFALL, presented by Seat of the Pants Productions


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Noah Haidle's SMOKEFALL, presented by Seat of the Pants Productions

August 2-11, 2019Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM / Sundays at 2 PMThe Playground at Ensemble Theatre, 2843 Washing...
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