One in the Chamber

Reviewed by Reza Vojdani
Lounge Theatre
Through August 17

RECOMMENDED:

Photo by Chelsea Coleman

Though this marks her directorial debut, writer-director Marja-Lewis Ryan displays her creative strength in her play about a family six years after the accidental killing of one son by the other, and the visit of a social worker that may determine the surviving son’s future.

At first glance, the family seems like your typical rural, working-class American household: The mother, Helen (Heidi Sulzman), keeps watch over her three children (past tragedies aside), while the father, Charles (Robert Bella), works long hours as a warehouse manager. On the whole, the family fits into the mold of a superficially “normal” clan as well as the dysfunctional, broken mess that is left in the wake of the eldest son Adam (Alec Frasier) accidentally, fatally shooting his brother Joey six years prior to the events of the play.

Michael Fitzgerald’s impeccably designed set mirrors with cinematic precision a family kitchen scattered with mementos, family photos, and remnants of meals and projects never truly finished. The combination of both organization and clutter reflects the family’s disheveled and devastated core. Charles now lives in a state of emotional numbness and despair, while also acting as mediator for the various conflicts that arise. Helen, on the other hand, careens between nostalgic sorrow and defensive anger at her own family, as well at its social worker named Jennifer (Emily Peck). However, Helen’s constant emotional outbursts start to wear thin, and diminish the gravity of her mental fragility.

Also, some of the interactions between the family members devolve into melodrama. Teenage daughter Kaylee (Kelli Anderson) returns in the early morning from a night of ostensible partying. Her subsequent shouting match with her mother is simply generic. Similarly, Fenix Esabella’s performance as 8-year-old daughter Ruthie straddles a precarious line between youthful innocence and child-like sassiness that at times descends into kitsch. By play’s end, however, complaints about such stock moments are mere quibbles, contrasted against the looming portrait of a tortured family that contains so much subtext, and reveals so efficiently its many stresses.

As social worker Jennifer, Peck enters the household full of professionalism and armed with the standard array of analytical questions. As time goes on, we see Jennifer’s youth and lack of experience cause her to fumble amidst the various levels of helpfulness and antagonism that the various family members lob her way. Jennifer’s struggle to understand and to approach this family’s tragedy with an open mind (only to be met with responses that she can’t ever truly understand) becomes the play’s focal point.

The story’s culmination doesn’t pass blame or traffic in platitudes that everything will work itself out. Rather, it shows us the true ramifications of what happens when we choose to lay blame rather than to forgive; when we let the tragedy of the past outweigh the realities of the present. Semantic questions on the realistic or feasible nature of the play’s hard-hitting ending crop up not because that ending seems unjustified within the play, but because we don’t want to believe that a situation like this could happen in real life. The final result is the presentation of a family’s unimaginable tragedy in a way that is both approachable and emotionally poignant.

Lounge Theater, 6201 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through August 17. (323) 960-7724, plays411.com/chamber