Sarah Kay Godot and Ron Placone (credit: James Robbins photography)
Reviewed by Ali MacLean
Hollywood Fringe at The Broadwater Black Box
Through June 29th
Termination Fee is a 60-minute dark comedy written by Ron Placone, and co-directed and starring Placone and Sara Kay Godot. It explores our country’s failure of a healthcare system, and the drastic measures one couple will take to procure insulin.
The story kicks off when Neil (Placone) is laid off from his job via Zoom. The comedy is immediately inherent, as Neil is made to comfort the superior firing him. Neil’s wife, Adi (Godot), a folk musician awaiting her big break, needs insulin, which they can’t afford without his health insurance.
The premise, which is only possible in a place like America, is the same dilemma that goaded Walter White into cooking meth, in Breaking Bad. Not a lot has changed in the healthcare landscape since that show debuted. However, Neil doesn’t become a drug kingpin; his chosen sacrifice for his wife is that he will commit suicide. How the money will be available to her after that isn’t clear. Some insurance policies are forfeited when suicide is the cause of death, but our belief is suspended to follow the characters down this road.
Neil’s big sacrifice comes at an odd time — they both claim to be stuck in a marriage past its prime, with Neil bitter that he turned down a job in Italy for her, and Adi ticked off that Neil doesn’t want to have sex. They both admit the adultery they’d like to commit — Adi lusts after her music-writing partner Ryan, and Neil wouldn’t mind shacking up with his co-worker Liz. The two decide it’s best if they divorce. Despite all this unhappiness between them, Neil still insists on killing himself to help Adi. He even takes pleasure in planning his death. Yet something happens when Neil begins to live like his days are numbered — the relationship thrives.
Placone is believable as the morose, disgruntled Neil, whose casual approach to his suicide is as if like he were planning a trip to the Poconos. A few great zingers fly back and forth, which makes sense, given that Placone has a stand-up comedy background. Godot has the more difficult job of making sense of Adi’s indifference to Neil’s plans to kill himself, which slowly starts to change when it’s already too late.
That brings up an ethical question. The play touches on very potent issues. Healthcare in this country is appalling. One shouldn’t have to kill themselves so their wife can get medicine. Is Neil doing it for that reason? Or is that a handy excuse for him to be seen as the hero rather than a coward? Suicidal ideation and depression are at epidemic levels in our country, so it is worrisome that Godot’s character spends the first half of the play reacting to Neil’s suicide plan as if he had a cold. It is almost malfeasance how little she protests his ideation. Is she just a passive character? Or does she not care? These questions are an ongoing theme throughout the performance. They often talk about being angry but with little inflection. Their arguments seem a little too easy. For two people on the precipice of financial ruin and medical calamity, it’s all a bit laissez-faire.
The set consists of a futon and coffee table, which makes it difficult to vary the staging. Perhaps an outside directorial eye could have broken up the pattern in each scene. The script could use some sense of urgency. How long does Neil have left until he kills himself? Is there a calendar date? Will she run out of insulin before the date? It’s all so ambiguous that it deflates any tension.
In the final moments, there is finally a show of anger where Neil reveals how he doesn’t care if they both die. It leads one to believe that the goal was never about helping Adi but ending his life. At this point, it becomes a toss-up who you are pulling for. But this is a comedy, so let’s leave it at that.
This play raises pertinent questions that government officials should be answering instead of dodging reporters in the Capitol hallways. The clever script serves the medicine with a dose of sugar yet almost overpowers the real issues at hand here: an unhappy marriage, a cycle of poverty with a chronic illness, and a very depressed person to whom no one reaches out. Despite the wit served up here, these real issues can’t be fixed in 60 minutes with a joke and some of Zuzu’s petals.
Hollywood Fringe at The Broadwater Black Box, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.; Sun., June 21, 10:30 pm; Tues., June 24, 9:30 pm; Sun., June 29, 3 pm. https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/11542?tab=tickets Running time: 60 minutes.
