Review: Touch at Hot Mama's Espresso Bar [theater]

When the next actor does show up, it's after Zoe, who never appears onstage, has vanished. Benny (Aaron Black), Kyle's childhood friend, turns up to interact with him, and then provides a neat counterpoint to his monologue. Each character, of the four who appear onstage, enjoys at least a few minutes of time to address the audience directly, adding a documentary feel to the proceedings. As we learn Zoe's fate (never truly in question), we meet the rest of the cast: Kyle's sister-in-law Serena (Evelyn LaLonde) and the prostitute to whom Kyle turns for comfort, Kathleen (Jennymarie Jemison). Through them, Kyle's need to mourn, grieve, and learn to feel again is explored.

All of which is just a little bit uncomfortable. Not through any fault of the performance, exactly—there's little reason to shower the cast or Gidseg's direction with anything other than praise—but because after a while, the piece begins to feel a bit exploitative. At the end of the first act, there's a shocking, sudden twist, worthy of an episode of Lost, regarding what happened to Zoe in her final moments, that never truly pays off. Later, there's a point at which Kyle confronts her killers, once again making her rape and murder all about him. All of the scenes between Kyle and Kathleen are heavy with the weight of the fact that his wife was raped and murdered - after all, there are few women more at risk of a similar fate than those in her line of work. But despite being repeatedly bludgeoned with the horrors of what happened to Zoe, we're never—not once—given the opportunity to consider it from her point of view. It's almost as if, in Press-Coffman's view, the worst thing about being kidnapped, raped, and murdered is that it'll send a woman's husband into a serious existential crisis.

And that doesn't sit well. It becomes especially problematic when placed alongside the character of Kathleen—whose name we know from the program, if not the play itself—who's treated as a cipher, a gauge by which we can measure the progress Kyle is making in dealing with his grief. When it's time for us to learn that he's beginning to regain the warmth and charm that made Zoe fall for him initially, the prostitute begins to fall in love with him; when it's time for us to learn that he's moved beyond the need for prostitutes and can truly love again, she ceases to appear onstage all together. It's hard not to feel as though she's being used by the script as much as she's being used by Kyle.

It's frustrating, because this is a moving play, intimately staged in the back patio of a local coffee shop and deftly directed to the point that it's able to transform a living room into a campsite with only the addition of a Coleman lantern. Varenhorst's performance is the finest on an Austin stage so far this year, and Jemison's brings a resigned longing to a part that had the potential to be little more than the Hooker With A Heart of Gold stereotype straight out of a 1940s Hollywood studio picture. And even if LaLonde and Black struggle a bit to keep up, that can be attributed to the fact that their characters are frequently left to interact with one another, which is kinda boring in a play that's entirely about Kyle. The script isn't even bad; it's often quite powerful, but that doesn't excuse the lingering issues.

But, hell—is a male critic at liberty to raise these concerns in a play written and directed by women? The answer's not easy, and Vestige should be praised for continuing their mission of bringing theater to Austin that doesn't offer up easy answers.