Savage In Limbo
Savage In Limbo
By John Patrick Shanley
Directed by Kate Ingram
Starring Chloe Miranda and Rachel Schimenti
UCF Conservatory Theater, Orlando FL</strong>
Ever watch one of those Sci-Fi shows where the hero is stuck in a time loop and can’t break free? That’s where Bronx abrasive Denise Savage (Miranda) finds herself when she enters Murk’s (Bryant Hernandez) stifling bar. The back bar is covered with burry pictures of missing patrons and the plants are metaphorically desiccated – as he waters them he explains they might be dead but they don’t realize it. So are the patrons of this bar – while street noises rumble in from a more active world, these barflies are trapped in psychic amber. Alcoholic April (Kayla Zaniboni) nods off stage right, a half pool table (seriously – they cut a pool table in half, including the slate) sits down stage, and behind the bar Murk angles for the “Least Likely To Get A Tip Barkeep In New York” award. After Denise’s initial burst of energy, Linda enters in a tight dress with her morals dragging behind her. Her goomba boy friend Tony (Kevin Alonso) only bangs her on Mondays, won’t even discuss the Yanks with her and still Linda talked her aunt into keeping one of his crotch spawn. He can’t be as bright as he seems, he missed several entire pregnancies in the dark. We spend the next hour debating how to change ourselves, take control of our lives, and find some sort of happiness, or at least how to find someone willing to pour water on our withered roots on a regular basis. Marriage is proposed all around: Murk decides it’s good way to keep April semi-pickled until her liver fails, Tony decide it’s good way to keep his offspring from getting wuss names like “Alphonso,” and Ms. Savage – well, she IS in limbo, and as a 32 year old virgin the betting line runs she’ll still be holding out at 62.
Oh, where to begin…for some reason the author demands this play be set in The Bronx and while everyone generally kept to the stereotypical tough NYC talk, there were wobbles and this play could have been set anywhere and anytime. Murk was tough, but his insistence that patrons possess unconsumed alcohol at all times or leave wore thin, his joint wasn’t a blind pig but a semi-respectable bar with a semi-complete pool table. April’s character felt opaque, nothing really motivated her alcoholism and it was odd to watch Murk encourage her drinking. We’ve all been around alcoholics, they are not pleasant and no sane friend would encourage them. Tony and Linda were the most believable – with little to look forward to in life the mechanics of sex were the only entertainment available until the mechanics of raising children and fighting about it replaced passion. Denise was the enigma, and the unchanged soul at the end – there was no real reason she couldn’t attract a man, so why wasn’t she doing that instead of yelling at all the rest of us?
I want to like these folks but they work hard to drive me away – Murk the drink Nazi, the downward spiraling April, and the hectoring Denise make this a bar I won’t visit again. Linda and Tony were bound together for a life of shattered dishes and shattered emotions, but at least they have the commonalty of identical social-economic experience. Translated, they are the classic hard luck types from “Saturday Night Fever” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” but a great bounce in bed may be enough to keep their love alive. But poor Denise – she’s stuck in a clever title role that won’t take her anywhere, no matter what bar she haunts. This is deconstructionism and we don’t need happy endings. Heck, we don’t even need coherent endings – welcome to the post modernist stage where the souls are cut into random sections just like the props.
For more information on UCF Conservatory Theatre, visit http://www.theatre.ucf.edu
