Beloved
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
The Road Theatre
Thru June 19
RECOMMENDED
Beloved, a world premiere play by Canadian playwright Arthur Holden, opens in a waiting room outside a counsellor’s office at a posh school, where an affluent upper-middle-aged couple await news of their son. Thirty minutes have gone by since they’ve arrived, and no one has summoned them in, or explained why they’ve been called. Stephen (Sam Anderson), grown choleric and hostile, declares his intent to barge into the counsellor’s inner sanctum despite being asked not to enter. His wife Dorothy (Taylor Gilbert) cautions restraint, but she too is anxious and upset, and will become more so as the situation unfolds.
Eventually, they meet with a guidance counsellor, Silvia (Cherish Monique Duke), who, after much argument, discloses that David, their son, has been caught downloading child pornography from the school’s computer network and is now being questioned. Stephen’s reaction is to become even angrier; he blames the school for carelessly allowing the boy access to the system, then threatens to sue. Silvia, sympathetic but firm, musters all her conciliatory skills to make clear why it really is in everyone’s best interest for Stephen to refrain.
Beloved — so titled because it’s the root meaning, in Hebrew, of “David” — is subtitled “a play in three waiting rooms.” Each scene revolves around a crisis brought on by David’s actions or by the act of another that relates to him. In each one, Dorothy and Stephen meet with a professional attached to education, medicine or law. The play delves into the dynamics of a dysfunctional family — most prominently the abusive relationship between a father and son, where the former is heterosexual, homophobic and domineering and his child is gay. The scenario plays out without our ever meeting the troubled youth in question.
Directed by Cameron Watson, Beloved makes for intense, heavy drama, with nary a smidgen of humor to mitigate its darkness. The unseen David is a sliver of a character, who never emerges in full focus but exists primarily as a prompt for the conflict between husband and wife. Many of the things we learn about Stephen in the first section are exhibited again in each of the varying contexts —so, for me, the script might have been condensed.
Holden’s dialogue, however, is sound, and the play offers a superb vehicle for accomplished performers to showcase their skills. And Gilbert, Anderson and Duke are all in top form. Gilbert is most striking as a tough cookie of a woman transposed by circumstance into a desperate, distraught mother who fears for her son. Anderson, whose character’s transitions lie at the heart of the script, carries the heaviest load as an angry frustrated man in denial, and his complex portrayal doesn’t disappoint (though the part is written for a younger individual). In each scene, Duke elevates an essentially reactive role as representative of the Establishment to that of an equal player in the drama unraveling before her.
Brian Graves’s drab grey-hued scenic design reflects the story’s grim institutional backdrop, suitably elaborated on by Nicholas Santiago’s projection design, Derrick McDaniel’s lighting and Marc Antonio Pritchett’s sound. Michele Young’s costumes for the women add a bit of color to the setting and serve as apt complements for their characters.
The Road Theatre, 10747 Magnolia Blvd., N. Hollywood. Fri.- Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm; thru June 19. Sunday performances are pay-what-you-can. www.roadtheatre.org Running time: 95 minutes with no intermission.
