The ensemble of “Bounds” Photo by Paul M. Rubenstein
Reviewed by Steven Vargas
City Garage Theatre
Through March 16
A group of five women run around gunning for one of the four chairs on stage. They say it’s a game. It is like musical chairs, but their intensity suggests their lives depend on winning a beloved seat. At the right moment, they all land on one chair, except for one woman. It is unclear what she loses and what the other four win. Much like the women sitting, you end up waiting with no answer in sight.
City Garage Theatre’s production of Bounds by Italian playwright Tino Caspanello (translated by Huan Saussy) centers on the five women (Angela Beyer, Devin Davis-Lorton, Alyssa Frey, Alyssa Ross and Lenka Janischova Shockley) stranded on the shore, waiting for a decision to be made for them. They play games to pass the time and form unlikely bonds. The playwright describes it as a metaphor for a society where the rules are sometimes broken by oppression and power. However, the production lacks the grounding to make the playwright’s intention come true. We see the women cry, laugh, play and fear with much passion and vigor, but we never see or understand why. As a result, the message falls flat and the energy runs stale.
The play opens up with the sounds of the ocean and Shockley’s incredible singing. Two women are immigrants, two are guards and one is a chief guard. The weight of their identity isn’t depicted or used to add tension. Caspanello wrote the play intending to explore how people of different cultures and ethnicities could interact with each other in a closed space. City Garage Theatre’s production is ridden of identity. It is a clean slate with only the text to drive the story forward.
The lack of grounding forces the ensemble to rely on their actions to let the weight of the words come across. It doesn’t work. Without a sense of identity and context for their time at sea, the show feels like women walking and talking in circles. While this may be what is happening on the surface, the play suggests that there is more beneath it. The closest the production gets to this is when one of the women says she wants to go to hell. Someone confirms, “All of us straight to hell!” The group laughs. Here, we learn that this group believes and understands the weight between heaven and hell. And this is their hell.
The direction by Frédérique Michel often pulls you out of the production. Some detailed movements cause the direction to teeter between realism and surrealism. In the middle of an argument, where their stances and mannerisms are realistic, Shockley’s character laughs by moving her flat hand in a circle in front of her face. It comes out of the blue. There is a clear struggle between when Michel chooses to be abstract. It only works when David-Lorton introduces a new game where the group runs in place. When they close their eyes, they hallucinate that they are in paradise. It is seen on their faces as they move in unison, running in place with unique and specific movements of their legs with their shoes on their hands. The surrealism works here because it was built with intention.
Much of the production lacks purpose because there is no underlying story. David-Lorton screams and it feels empty. The girls scramble and it feels random. The characters have been stripped of their identity (The actors are donned in all-black attire on a stage designed by Charles A. Duncombe that lacks a sense of place.)
A helicopter is heard in the distance. Frey stands there distraught, encouraging the other women to play the same game as the one in the beginning. They run in circles, gunning for a chair while Frey stands out of the pack awaiting the helicopter’s arrival. It feels serious and the emotions on their faces look real. However, without the preparation and direction to give them a reason to be scared, the emotions feel unwarranted and confusing. What’s in the helicopter? What’s so special about the chair? Why is it something to fear if they are stranded? How do they like one another at the end if they’ve been bickering the entire time? There are so many questions unanswered that not even a fearful look into the landing helicopter could resolve them.
City Garage Theatre, 2525 Michigan Ave. T1, Santa Monica. Opens Thurs., Feb. 6; thru March 14. https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/city-garage/bounds#. Running time: 65 minutes with no intermission.
