The Solid Life of Sugar Water
Reviewed by Paul Birchall
Deaf West Theatre Company
Through October 13
RECOMMENDED
These days, playwright Jack Thorne is best known as one of the team of authors (including J.K. Rowling) behind the stage juggernaut Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — but shortly before this huge success, he penned this powerful, elegiac tale of grief and grief’s aftermath in 2015. No young wizards here, nor time travelling time turners, though it is clear that the grieving characters inhabiting the play would love some magic. Instead, Thorne crafts a deceptively simple tragedy set within a marriage.
Phil (Tad Cooley) and Alice (Sandra Mae Frank) are a young married couple grappling with the loss of their unborn child, which has affected their relationship. Their problems are compounded by the fact that the doctors have decreed that Alice must birth the stillborn child or risk not being able to have another. As Alice brings the fetus to term, knowing it will be dead after she gives birth, the couple’s emotional journey is depicted with uncommon clarity and searing sadness. Events take on an intensity almost too intimate to watch. Lovemaking scenes that depict their fading sexual passion are contrasted with recollections of their early relationship, which was based on melding personalities.
Thorne’s drama was not written for deaf performers, but director Randee Trabitz has restaged the work as such, and it’s an emotionally vibrant production. Cooley and Frank perform entirely in ASL (vocalized by voice actors Natalie Camunas and Nick Apostolina), and their status as deaf performers gives voice to a culture that isn’t often depicted. The voice actors occasionally encircle the performers, acting like guardian angels and sometimes assisting their signing counterparts by handing them a jacket or wheeling a chair over.
The drama involves a series of interactions that are so deeply personal they’re sometimes embarrassing to be privy to — the smell of a character’s foreskin, or an otherwise laughable disaster during an act of sexual foreplay. Inner thoughts are made explicit to create an almost spooky sense of mind reading. Yet, it’s the universality of the story that is the source of the play’s power. An intriguingly voyeuristic dimension is added in set designer Sean Fanning’s creative bedroom set, which is turned at an angle so that the audience’s point of view is one of perching on the ceiling and looking down at the characters in the secret haven of their marital bed.
That the interactions are performed in ASL adds a balletic dimension to the characters’ ferocious rage and sadness. Cooley’s quirky Phil is engaging and lovable, making his inability to console his wife all the more harrowing. Frank’s emotional range, amplified by the physical demands of ASL, is incredible. The result is beautiful, genuinely moving drama about daily life and tragedy.
Inner-City Arts, 720 Kohler St., Downtown L.A.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through Oct. 13. (818) 762-2298 or www.deafwest.org. Running time: 80 minutes with no intermission.
