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A Permanent Image
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Rogue Machine At Theatre/Theater
Through July 20
RECOMMENDED:
Like his other plays, Samuel D. Hunter’s A Permanent Image is set in the arid cultural wasteland of northern Idaho.
The play’s arena is the homestead of a dysfunctional family of three. On second thought, make that four. The living breathing characters are Carol (Anne Gee Byrd), a willful eccentric with an alcohol problem, and her two grown children – Bo (Ned Mochel), an international photojournalist of some renown; and Ally (Tracie Lockwood), a gay woman and small business owner who works 80 hours a week running her transport company.
The fourth individual is Carol’s dead husband Martin (Mark L. Taylor), who has only just died but who appears in a home movie he shot, before his passing, for the benefit of his children. His input, near the end, will likely change their view of him forever. Perhaps it will even change them.
At the beginning, however, everything takes place more or less predictably. The main issue of contention is Carol’s drinking. The second is Carol’s redo of the house. She’s painted everything white, including the pictures on the walls which she hadn’t bothered take down.
The third matter that’s touched upon is the infrequency of Bo and Ally’s visits. Bo’s excuse is that he lives 3000 miles away, but Ally has a two-hour drive. Despite that, she’s only visited once, shortly after the birth of her child, Max. Carol hasn’t seen her grandchild since.
The fourth arena is politics, and there’s a fiery exchange — a literal rough-and-tumble fallout — between Bo, who is a liberal, and Ally, who voted for Bush.
After an entertaining but not terrifically probing Act 1, the drama starts to percolate in Act 2, when Carol divulges that Martin had taken his own life and that she plans to do the same. We also gain insight into Ally’s troubles, and that adds dimension to the character and the drama.
Under John Flynn’s direction, the work on stage is solid all around, but it’s Lockwood who gains the laurels. Ally’s struggle to keep from coming apart seems to be taking place in real time right before our eyes.
The piece itself feels less than organic; it’s book-ended by notions of the cosmos and the human being’s insignificant place within it, suggested in Nicholas Santiago’s supernal video design. I recall this as a device in Hunter’s A Bright New Boise, in which it worked successfully. Here Martin and Carol are supposed to have been reading up on the Big Bang and other such matters, but I’m not sure I don’t share Bo and Ally’s skepticism on this point.
On the other hand, A Permanent Image also poses questions about the right to choose death over life, and the rush to judgment we often make on others’ behavior before taking honest stock of our own. That’s important stuff and I’d say worth contemplating in the context of this well-honed production.
Rogue Machine in Theatre/Theater, 5041 Pico Blvd., L.A.; Sat., 5 p.m. Sun., 7 p.m.; Mon., 8 p.m.; through July 20. (855) 585-5185, www.roguemachinetheatre.com
