Ripe Frenzy
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Greenway Arts Alliance
Through June 17
It’s hard to think of a timelier play than Jennifer Barclay’s Ripe Frenzy, about a shooting and mass murder that takes place in a high school in a small town in upstate New York. A rolling premiere from the National New Play Network, it opened here in Los Angeles the day after newspapers across the country reported the latest mind-blowing tragedy in Santa Fe, Texas, where 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis gunned down eight of his fellow schoolmates and two teachers. (A meme spreading across the internet reported the number of children killed by gunfire in the U.S. since 2012 to be greater than the number of American soldiers killed in overseas combat since 9/11 — that is, about 7,000 children.)
Unlike another recently staged drama, The Columbine Project, which unwinds from the standpoint of the perpetrators and their victims, this one is presented from the perspective of a parent, a 40-something widow named Zoe (Elizabeth Ann Bennett). The light of Zoe’s life is her teenage son.
When we meet Zoe, she’s speaking to us from the set for the local high school production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. It’s the 40th year that classic has been mounted at the school, and a tech rehearsal is in progress. As a student, Zoe had upended tradition by playing the Stage Manager, a role written for a male actor. These days she’s actually stage managing the show — working with her friend, Miriam (Melody Butiu), the show’s director. Miriam’s daughter Hadley (Troy Leigh-Ann Johnson) is performing the pivotal role of Emily, while the part of George is being played by Matt (Liam Springthorpe) the son of Zoe’s other best friend Felicia (Renée-Marie Brewster), a surgeon. The three women are lifelong friends; they drink wine and go camping together, and as children their three kids were best pals as well.
Although Matt and Hadley, now a couple, make their appearances, we never see Zoe’s son. The tech for the show, including the videography, is his creation — yet he remains behind the scenes, operating the video, the sound and the lights, not always according to plan. It’s an inauspicious tip-of-the-hat of what’s to come.
As to Zoe, her distinguishing personality trait is her desire to see things in a positive light. “Positivity is a choice I make,” she tells us early on, unabashedly defining herself as a person who works overtime at pretending that life is functioning OK when it isn’t. And though she’s bright and chirpy, we can’t help noting how short her fuse can be when things don’t go her way.
At some point the rehearsal is disrupted by news from Michigan — relayed via everyone’s cell phone — of the rising toll from the latest school shoot-up, with you-are-there footage from the killer’s GoPro. Zoe tries to ignore it, but eventually she too begins watching the horrific carnage streamed from the perspective of the perpetrator, Bryan James McNamara (Springthorpe). Later, with reality closing in on Zoe, his specter appears to confront and terrify her.
Barclay purposefully chose Our Town as the framework for her unsettling political drama, and her contrast between Wilder’s idealized small-town America of 1938 and today’s reality — where the lives of ordinary people, children and churchgoers among them — are at risk every day from deranged individuals with assault weapons, makes a strong impression. The play’s other major strength is the playwright’s insight into her focal character, a chatty woman, anxious to share, who (on the page) registers both as someone we might know — a familiar acquaintance or neighbor — and a symbol of that aspect of our nation’s collective sensibility that prefers living in denial.
These elements lend hope for a powerful and definitive American work, but in this production, the promise never materializes. Though she works hard, Bennett’s cerebral performance never draws from deep emotional roots. (Her program bio makes no mention of stage experience, only TV, and to my eye it shows). Under Alana Dietze’s direction, the supporting performances range from stilted to respectable. Among the ensemble Johnson is most memorable as Bethany (her second role, in addition to Hadley). An awkward misfit who lacks Hadley’s assurance, Bethany has a crush on Zoe’s son; spying on him through a neighboring window, she becomes privy to his secrets. In Johnson’s performance, Bethany’s adolescent vulnerability is made real and palpable, and it’s through this character that the drama’s catharsis plays out with the strongest impact.
Greenway Court Theatre, 544 N. Fairfax Ave., West Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 p.m.; Sun., 4 p.m. on May 20 and Jun. 17; through Jun. 17. (323) 673-0544 or GreenwayCourtTheatre.org. Running time: approximately 95 minutes with no intermission.
