[ssba]
Women w/o Walls
Reviewed by Paul Birchall
Lounge Theatre 2
Through December 12
Strong performances and imaginative direction are not enough to offset the weak and rather ponderously metaphysical meditation that is playwright Robin Rice’s clunky opus. It’s a play overlong at 70 minutes, and it feels like a re-cycled Twilight Zone but without Rod Serling’s twisty bite.
Rice’s play takes place on a Manhattan subway train – but mysteriously there are only two passengers, even though in the Big Apple people should be elbowing each other and cursing like sailors.
Pamela (Esther Mira) is a talented clarinet player who happens to be under the thumb of her abusive father and is suffering from some kind of illness. She has no idea how she magically appeared on the train. The other passenger, a prim but not unkind lady (Kristin Carey-Hall) wearing scrubs and knitting a cap, refers to herself rather disturbingly as the “transition nurse.”
Before long, Pamela is joined by a couple of other commuters – a homeless lady (Jen Albert), who appears to have had a prior run-in with the nurse, and an angry young punk (Natalia Ochoa). The Transition Nurse calms everyone down and urges them to put aside their worldly concerns for the trip they are about to embark upon. By now, even the least spiritual among them realizes that the subway isn’t bound for Brooklyn, but for the Great Hereafter, so they must make peace with their lives and each other before they get there.
Director Frances Loy’s production battles the inert elements of Rice’s flat and often pretentiously quasi-theological script as best it can, but the writing is generally lackluster, with a weak storyline and a variety of exchanges that leave us wondering why any of these people are bothering to talk to each other at all.. The characters are intentionally unrelated and perhaps are meant to be metaphors for something, but the writing lacks clarity and is full of heavy handed and poorly integrated symbolism.
Director Loy’s workmanlike-staging is served quite well through committed performances from several remarkably organic actors, who have done yeoman’s work in finding three dimensional personalities for these frustratingly slight characters. Carey-Hall boasts a really nicely maternal figure as the angelic nurse – and Albert’s full-throttled turn as the eccentric and unexpectedly wise homeless lady is charming.
Lounge Theatre 2, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd, Hollywood.: Fri–Sat 8:00; Sun. 4:00 p.m.; through December 12. https://plays411.net. Running time: 70 minutes with no intermission.
