Antonio Jaramillo and Ashley Alvarez (Photo courtesy of Jaramillo Productions)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Jaramillo Productions at The Victory Theatre
Through Sept. 7
Playwright William Mastrosimone’s most prominent work, Extremities, which had an off-Broadway run before it was made it into a 1986 feature film starring Farrah Fawcett, was a harrowing account of a young woman who turns the tables on her would-be rapist. Arguably ground-breaking in its day, Extremities fell into the gap between feminist manifesto and lurid exploitation. As a snapshot of the zeitgeist of that era, it holds some interest. Otherwise, it has not aged well.
Neither has The Woolgatherer, Mastrosimone’s 1979 play, his first, which can now be seen in a visiting production at The Victory.
The play revolves around Rose (Ashley Alvarez), a candy counter salesperson who has invited brash long-distance trucker, Cliff (Antonio Jaramillo) to her squalid apartment, which has an ominously boarded up window that Rose refuses to have opened. As soon as they enter, Rose divulges that the last inhabitant hanged herself but reconsidered her actions, as evidenced by the rope fibers deeply embedded in her dead hands — indications of her frantic attempts to live.
Cliff isn’t thrilled with that creepy story— not exactly an ice-breaker— and as Rose’s dialogue gets more random and offbeat, Cliff soon realizes he’s dealing with a “whacko,” However, he’s more interested in getting some “wham bam thank you ma’am” than he is in Rose’s eccentricities.
It’s apparent that Rose is not simply offbeat but seriously “off.” She has been so emotionally shattered by witnessing thugs slaying endangered cranes at the local zoo that she is now only marginally functional. She is a sort of Kaspar Hauser, not quite of this world. One could well believe she had been locked in a closet for years.
Of course, by play’s end, cynical Cliff, who has been buffeted by life and simply survives “minute to minute,” finds common ground with Rose, an exotic and endangered bird herself who shares his desperate loneliness.
Although she becomes more credible and sympathetic in the second act, Alvarez is initially stiff and one note. Her naïve naïf lacks depth. By contrast, Jaramillo is consistently compelling, as evidenced by a commanding second act monologue that elevates the production. Yet he sometimes veers into stridency, an over-the-top intensity that we sense is his effort to compensate for his co-star’s inadequacies. Director Rob Nagle, a well-regarded actor on the local theater scene, does little to redress the imbalance between his performers.
The term “woolgathering”—the old practice of harvesting stray bits of sheep’s wool from thorns and branches and then weaving them into cloth— has become a common term for daydreaming. Try as it may, this patchwork revival leaves only scattered threads instead of the vivid tapestry it might have been.
Jaramillo Produtions at The Victory Theatre, 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank. Fri.-Sat., 7 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. thru Sept. 7. www.JaramilloProductions.com 1 hour, 45 minutes with intermission.
