Review: Talking With at City Theater

It's almost an adage in the theater: Monologue plays are dangerous. If not properly textured, they can be downward slopes into boredom and irritation for audiences. Performers can become "actress-y" when dealing with overtly narrative speech. It's common for a play like this to get derailed and stuffed with excessive space-fillers. These plays are deathtraps for amateurs...

So North By Northwest should be commended for this generally successful attempt.

The script is a hodgepodge of pieces both sharp and lackluster—mostly the former—meant to scan the scope of contemporary female experience. The playwright, "Jane Martin", is a man, which counts (understandably) for the periodic lack in verisimilitude. Portions of pieces tend towards cheaper and more quotidian modes of audience engagement, like questions to the audience not intended for answer and wink-and-nod finishes. Certain pieces are innocuous drivel of the "I'm a woman, it's hard, I'm going crazy, but I'm still lovable because I'm you" and the "Mom died. Sucks," ilk, but the platform is largely firm.

Good. Script talk is out of the way.

The set's simple and effective. These are life portraits, and they are appropriately framed in what amounts to a large box with no walls. The lighting wasn't nor did it need to be stunning; it suited purpose.

Onto the meat. Often in theater, the lines between the weaknesses of actors and directors are blurred. There are so many variables to consider: The possibilities of recalcitrant actors, incompetent directors, inability to enact vision due to poor training/communication, etc. The cast and crew in this production are obviously tight-knit, and most of the actresses in this production clearly have chops. Michelle Cheney's transfixing portrayal of an aware-via-disillusionment actress offers a fractured and vulnerable strength. Jennifer Coy's turn as a snake handler who loses religion is infused with a stunning, disquieting, and mired sincerity. Wendy Zavaleta lends a quiet ache and puissance to an otherwise boring and cheaply symbolic death-of-parent piece. No, the oversights in this production can clearly be attributed to the sometimes myopic and cataracted eye of the director. Certain moments of real depth and revelation were allowed to be glazed over. Actresses were allowed to inflict disingenuous accents and distracting, hyperbolic gestures onto the audience. If a character states that she is carrying a box brimming with poisonous snakes, then she should by no means remove a constrictor from the box. If a character has a facial scar around which her entire monologue is focused, the scar should be believable. If the fluidity of a piece is contingent upon the turning off of lights, the actress should know where the goddamned lamp switches are. Nominal monetary resources are no excuse for poor production value, nor blind expectation for the audience's generousity; in fact, they provide opportunity for the director to focus more intently on nuance and crafting the performances. One of the first considerations of a company should always be the possibility that corner-cutting and substitutions for script demands might lead to diminished impact.

That said, the director has imbued the piece with a fledgling, earnest sense of zeal and vibrancy which obscures most of the production's faults, and has clearly crafted an environment of exploration and trust. Overall, Talking With is a solid showcase of strong female performance, which is what the whole point is in the first place.

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