Chuma Gault and Jason Delane (Photo by Cooper Bates)
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Odyssey Theatre Ensemble and Lower Depth Theatre
Through June 14
Chuma Gault and Jason Delane Photo by Cooper Bates
Hymn, British playwright Lolita Chakrabarti’s play about half-brothers who meet and bond later in life, pays tribute to the idea of brotherly love and male fellowship in the best, most humanistic sense of the term. Unfortunately, a worthy theme won’t compensate for a fractured narrative, and despite the efforts of two skilled and sensitive performers and an accomplished/seasoned director, the production stumbles.
Directed by Gregg T. Daniel, the two men meet following the funeral service for Gil’s (Chuma Gault) dad, an accomplished tailor and all-around craftsman who came from nothing and built a business that comfortably supported his family. Gil is delivering his eulogy when Benny (Jason Delane) enters the church. We’ve met Benny in a brief, prior scene where, belligerent and inebriated, he’s been ejected from a pub. At the service, however, he sits quietly, listening, his expression troubled. Later, after everyone’s left, he engages Gil in conversation, displaying some photos as evidence that he is Gil’s half-brother, the offspring of a brief adulterous affair between his mother and Gil’s dad. After his mother discovered she was pregnant, Benny tells Gil, their father had callously refused to acknowledge either her or Benny himself. No support was ever forthcoming. Benny’s mother became mentally unstable, and Benny had spent his childhood and youth in and out of homes for unwanted kids, marking him for life.
Gil is dubious at first, but a subsequent DNA test confirms Benny’s claim. Rather than dispute things further (as likely would happen in your standard TV melodrama), Gil makes an effort to get to know his new-found sibling, only six days younger than himself. They begin to meet, exchanging confidences and engaging in shared activities —the gym, for example, where Benny gives Gil pointers in boxing; or at home, where they sing and dance and bond over a similar taste in music. Eventually, Gil works up the gumption to suggest to Benny that they abandon their respective jobs and partner on a new enterprise that Gil predicts will yield great gains for them both.
All this may be heartening to watch, but it lacks dramatic intrigue. Like a lost hiker, the plot meanders. With his troubled upbringing, Benny’s internal conflicts are clear, but the character of Gil is far more ambiguously drawn; the text suggests problems with a domineering father figure and a sense of inferiority in relation to his more accomplished or outspoken older sisters — but these remain inferred and are never fully explored or integrated into the dallying plot. Eventually, the narrative takes a sharp unanticipated downturn, and a catharsis we are unprepared for quickly follows, one too contrived to be satisfying.
The actors do their best given the material, with Delane having the benefit of a more clearcut blueprint for the unsettled Benny, brought up to feel part of the underclass.
The set by Stephanie Kerley Schwartz features a shallow raised platform upstage, which holds all the various props, and a low wooden platform, a few inches high maybe, that extends downstage close to the audience. The purpose of this latter platform is unclear — in terms of movement, it seems wholly constricting rather than functional. The backdrop, indicative of a church, stays the same throughout, regardless of where any of the action is taking place, and might have been better communicated with a projection, an observation one might make for the other scenes as well.
Odyssey Theater, 2055 South Sepulveda Blvd., West LA. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm, Wed., May 27, 8 pm; thru June 14. OdysseyTheatre.com Running time: approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.
