The Conduct of Life

Reviewed by Paul Birchall
City Garage
Through August 17

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Photo by Paul M. Rubenstein

Playwright Maria Irene Fornes’s 1983 drama of control and tyranny gets a ferocious rendering in director Frederique Michel’s fitfully stylized staging.  Within the context of Fornes’s sometimes disjointed dialogue and surreal plotting, Michel’s production becomes more unnerving as we start to realize that, when one discusses torture and oppression, all who witness it are complicit in wrongdoing.

In an unnamed Latin American country, Orlando (George Villas) works for the government as some sort of political torturer-cum-executioner – and at home he is every bit the Head of the Household, browbeating and abusing his long suffering wife Leticia (Kristina Drager), who only wants her husband to be nice again, and who dreams of someday going back to finish the elementary school she had to drop out of.

To make matters worse, Orlando, as part of his appetite-driven, monstrous behavior, has kidnapped a young beggar girl (Nili Rain Segal), whom he spends most of his off-work hours viciously beating and raping. Leticia has an idea of what Orlando is up to, but she doesn’t have the power to do anything about it, so she instead abuses and yells at her own maid, Olimpia (Nicole Gerth).  Events come to a head when Orlando’s already considerable wickedness escalates out of control, forcing the women either to take matters into their own hands, or die trying.

When considering the strengths of Fornes’s text, it is hard not to be moved and terrified by the power dynamics in evidence. The play eloquently makes the statement that when a tyrant is left unchallenged, it is partially the fault of those nearby who are not directly being tyrannized (which is, I must confess, not the most sympathetic of interpretations). And, yet, even within the intentionally surreal situations, the piece suffers from an off-putting directness, bereft of ambiguity or shading – all the situations seem so bizarrely broad, it’s hard not to dismiss them as uninvolving.

Part of the problem, one suspects, is thatthat the piece simply has not aged well:  While watching the work, we find our minds drifting to the similar relationship that was engendered on the TV series The Sopranos, in which the brute husband’s wife knows on some level that her man is a monster but chooses to deny it to herself. Much the same situation transpires here, but with less subtlety and more disconnected dialogue.

It is interesting to note that director Michel, perhaps not unintentionally, stages the work in a style that strangely resembles a Latin American telenovela.  Pacing is fast, but the characterizations are a little one-dimensional.  Though no fault of the actors, Villas’s vile Orlando has not a redeeming facet – not that a professional torturer and rapist should have redeeming facets, but perhaps some quality that might temper the Personification of Evil. Here, he blusters across the stage, consciously echoing Al Pacino in Scarface.  By contrast, Drager’s drifting Leticia is almost too glamorous in a series of gorgeous outfits and dresses that conjure the image of a long-suffering soap opera heroine.

That said, the production to its credit is undeniably chilling, with the work’s omnipresent tone of dread rendered with feverish skill.  And while we never really come to feel much pity or sympathy for the characters here, it’s possible to admire the fierce acting behind Villas’s bestial Orlando and Drager’s bewildered Leticia.  Particularly compelling in a supporting role is Nicole Gerth, as the family’s venomously bitter maid, who serves as an angry conduit between Leticia’s at times willful ignorance and Orlando’s monstrousness.

City Garage, Building T1 at Bergamot Station Arts Center, 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.;  Sun., 5 p.m.; through Aug. 17.  citygarage.org.