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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Brutal
and beautiful might appear to be strange bedfellows, but they are apt
descriptors for <a href="http://www.barclayagency.com/parks.html"><span
style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a>'
engrossing play <a
href="http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/theater/reviews/18grace.html"><span
style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>"The Book of Grace"<b> </b></span></a>and
the stunning production of it that opened over the weekend at Cleveland Public
Theatre. Parks, who won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize for "Top Dog/Underdog,"
has a gift for capturing humanity, in our brutality and beauty, with her glancing
dialogue, people talking to each other by talking past each other. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Less cryptic and
more narrative than "Top Dog," "The Book of Grace" turns on
the dynamics of a family so dysfunctional and estranged it's barely a family. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Vet, a veteran of
the first war against Iraq and now a U.S. Border Patrol guard, is a brute who
says he's "on the good foot" with his second wife, Grace, but he's
dug a grave in the back yard as a reminder who's in charge. Grace is by all
appearances his doormat, but she slowly reveals herself to be person of desires
and of substance, longing for a red dress in a department store window, and
having a voracious sexual appetite and a secret volume of rebelliously poetic
observations under the floorboards. Into this little world enters Buddy, who
unlike Grace and Vet, is black. He returns after 15 years, and after serving in
Persian Gulf II, with vengeance in mind and a grenade in pocket, to a set right
some ancient wrong -- but whether real or perceived is never made clear. Although
a kitchen sink is involved, this is no throw-back to <a
href="http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/classic/kitchen-sink.htm"><span
style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>1950s-era domestic plays</span></a>.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>These characters
are meant to be real people, but they are also symbols for America and its
boundaries. Vet sees borders everywhere, on his TV, in the creases he irons in
his uniform trousers, and even in that hole. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>The CPT production,
the first since the play premiered in New York earlier this year, is directed
with a haunting touch, but with both feet planted firmly in reality, by <a
href="http://www.cleveland.com/onstage/index.ssf/2008/09/theater_review_karamu_and_doba.html"><span
style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>Sheffia Randall Dooley</span></a>.
She gets assists from set and lighting designer <a
href="http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2007/09/trad_a_burns_keeps_the_light_o.html"><span
style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>Trad A Burns</span></a>, who
encloses everything in fencing and provides a functional utilities, and from a
cast that performs as if intent on outdoing each other and eliciting from each
other their best work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Rod Lawrence
quivers with pent-up rage as the literally ready-to-explode Buddy. He gets his
chance to shine when he faces his own camcorder to document, mass murderer
style, what he believes to be his final words before setting off to claim fame
and infamy and revenge. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>As Vet, veteran
Cleveland area actor Chuck Kartali -- in a role at polar opposites with <a
href="http://www.cleveland.com/onstage/index.ssf/2009/12/a_christmas_story_live_at_the.html"><span
style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>the<b> </b>dad in the Cleveland
Play House's long-running "A Christmas Story"</span></a> -- expresses
his own rage with simple acts. Kartali tells us more with the spray button on
an electric iron and few clipped words than many another actor could with wild
gestures and paragraphs of prose. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>As fine as those
two performances are, <a
href="http://blog.cleveland.com/reviews/2007/10/three_tragedies_for_a_sad_seas.html"><span
style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>Sally Groth'</span></a>s Grace
mesmerizing presence here. Seductive, poetic, trembling to make her escape, she
is both spell-binding and liberating, completely lost in the moment and yet
able to transport us miles from this world to the great beyond of human
experience. This is wow time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>The play
occasionally makes its argument too neatly (and life is never neat). And the
ending, both in the writing and staging, verges toward the mawkish. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>But "The Book
of Grace" is one of those rare theatrical experiences -- a rare experience
of any kind -- that leave one forever changed for having had it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>-----<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Reserve your seats by
calling 216-631-2727 or at <a
href="http://www.cptonline.org/theater-show.php?id=131">http://www.cptonline.org/theater-show.php?id=131</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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