Deborah Geffner and Stefan Marks (Photo by Baranduin Briggs)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Odyssey Theatre
Through May 18
Ophelia, a visiting production at the Odyssey, seems focused on engendering deep thoughts about the nature of time and the evanescence of human relationships. What its rambling stream-of-consciousness plot actually inspires is a sense of frustration, as we struggle to parse the meaning — if any — behind the randomness.
Stefan Marks, the writer and director of this world premiere, plays Son, a divorced, unemployed, intermittently suicidal loser who has moved back in with his Mom (engaging Deborah Geffner), a sometime author and former topless dancer who shot her husband dead (apparently, with no legal ramifications) and is in a hurry to marry Son off before she dies. Meanwhile, Mom is about to move to a memory care facility, and she and Son are packing up the detritus of a lifetime.
While sifting through the clutter, Son finds a strange metal ball that Mom recognizes as a “reset” device lost among her dead husband’s effects. Apparently, one can press a button and rewind time, a phenomenon effectively underscored in Stephen Epstein’s clamorous sound design.
Indeed, it’s a fantastic and mysterious contraption. Yet Marks squanders the dramatic opportunities in his confusing jumble of a play, in which characters hold forth at length about — well, it’s difficult to say. To his credit, Marks interlaces the proceedings with a surprising amount of humor. In one of Son and Mom’s typically circular conversations (don’t worry, if you miss it the first time their dialogue will be “reset” and repeated), Son casually comments “I wish you didn’t kill dad.” Mom’s riposte? “I had to put him out of my misery” — not half bad, as aphorisms go.
When Son finally meets Her (Tatum Langton) — Her’s mother resides at the memory facility where his mother is moving to — the pair bond over such get-to-know-you chatter as Her’s “I fart.” This offbeat revelation is in no way a deal-breaker for the besotted Son. In fact, the two seem headed for marriage until Son awakens one morning to find that Her has inexplicably vanished during the night — an arbitrary event that isn’t even connected to the reset device, at least as far as we can ascertain.
Son subsequently becomes involved in a disastrous affair with a death-obsessed blood-spatter expert. One scary lady, she fetishizes thoughts of murder and is darkly irritated when she becomes pregnant with Son’s child. As with Her, she disappears overnight — this time to Son’s extreme relief. Meanwhile, Mom travels down an increasingly murky memory lane, quoting from Hamlet and recollecting her poisonous marriage to her abusive beatnik husband.
Frequent references are made to the fact that Son is significantly older than Her, but irrespective of their age difference, the romantic spark between them never combusts into believable sexual attraction. Her’s manic pixie dream girl persona, especially in contrast to Son’s stone-faced affectlessness, only widens the gap.
The randomness augments. In one hyper-stylized scene, Son pays tribute to his late father in a spoken word performance set off by Mark Svastics’ swiftly shifting lighting — bizarre hues that could have been lifted from Josh Logan’s infamous South Pacific color filters. Son’s presentation includes such poetical musings as “Does this world extend beyond my boner?” — an immortal utterance if ever there was one.
One suspects that, when all is said and done, Marks may simply be having us on. If so, the joke, cloaked in ersatz profundity, may be on him.
The Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda, West L.A. Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm; thru May 31. www.stefanmarks.com/ophelia Running time: 95 minutes without an intermission.
