Widows

Photo/Colin D. Young

At the bend in the river where the women do their wash, sits an old woman, Sofia (Ching Valdes-Aran), the fierce and stubborn grandmother of the Fuentes family. Sitting there, she is as still as the dead tree leaning out of the river; eyes full of sadness, she looks as raw as the wooden planks that make up the river bank. She is the living embodiment of the political paradox at the heart of Ariel Dorfman's excellent play, Widows: she waits because she cannot bear waiting.

With her four missing men, a father, husband, and two children, she represents the pain and hope of the village (widows all save a priest and her thirteen-year-old grandson), a group of otherwise weak-willed women who lose themselves in the routines of labor, refusing to speak the names as if that small mercy will now allow them to trust in the very military that abducted their men. Though her own daughter, Fidelia (Ana Cruz Kayne) has turned against her, desperate to believe the Captain's (Mark Alhadeff) razor promises, she knows what comes of men who say things like: "We are ready to forgive your disobedience if you are willing to forget our stern response to it, if you learn to behave." Even when a body floats out of the river, the villagers remain shadows of themselves, fearful of the vicious Lieutenant (Guiesseppe Jones) but more so of the nameless corpse that are afraid to claim -- in yet another paradoxical moment, the climax of the play, the women chant as one: "It's mine, oh please don't let it be mine."

For a political play, Widows digs remarkably deep, following not only the deep-rooted nature of fear, but also the internal clash between the military kindness (another paradox) and brute strength, the difference between the rich landowners and the poor peasants, and the frail attempts of a woman to carry on not just tradition, but culture. To that end, Hal Brooks directs the play like a river itself, surrounding the set on three sides by the audience, and narrowing the action to a thin strip of dying land, where the butts of rifles and the faceless bodies are at their most intimidating. The action flows quickly from scene to scene, bubbling up every now and then into a most magnificent Greek chorus of rapids, a babble of insistent voices that break our hearts upon the rocks. In this sense, Brooks is able to steer clear of some of the uneven actors, overlapping their voices and plowing through where he cannot avoid the worst of it. He also knows enough to go with the flow: in Act I, Mr. Jones overflows with malicious glee and several of the weeping widows crow instead of keen, but by Act II, the solid shoulders of Mrs. Valdes-Aran and the wincing mustache of Mr. Alhadeff help them dry off.

The play wonders if it is possible to build a democracy on lies and dead bodies; the answer is no. But if you throw in a mass of wailing women; a narrow, confrontational set; logically twisted lines; and a menacing phalanx of soldiers indistinguishable from dead bodies, then you can build a stirring play.

PLAY: FRINGE, "Reader"

Ariel Dorfman's 1995 play about the consequences of censorship is awash in Philip K. Dick-like stretches of the imagination, but it lacks dark humor and it loses itself amid interlocking scenes that we are never provided the key for. This blurring of lines is an intentional descent into self-abuse, but it's a shame that Ianthe Demos can't find a stronger anchor for the play: everything else she's working with is sharp, from Mike Riggs' noirish lighting in the background and ominous penumbra in the front to James Hunting's excellently minimal set: a wall of papers blocks out the truth of the outside world; a venetian blind shutters the shudders behind it. Even when our heroes venture outside, they are seen only from the paradoxical illumination of umbrellas with bulbs screwed into the top.

The cast is fantastic too: Nick Stevenson steals the show as the spry Director of the censoring bureau, a man who literally casts himself as the villain when he starts rewriting the story, and Darrell James is grounded as the beleaguered antihero who can only save those he loves by condemning them to lesser evils than the ones he sees over the lawless horizon. Demos's problem is that there's little delineation between Daniel Lucas, the censor, and Don Alfonso Morales, the character in the novel he's reading. Both are played by James, and Don Alfonso, the "fictional" one, has a more exaggerated tone, but as the scenes slide into one another it's hard to tell what's going on. The same applies for Nico Evers-Swindell, who plays the son (either Nick Lucas or Enrique Morales, depending on the time), and for Emma Jackson, who plays Irene/Jacqueline, the love interests of Daniel/Don Alfonso. I'm sure it's as confusing for you to read that as it is for me to write.

The show evolves into a terse farce for the climax as the characters all grow a collective spin and rise up, as they must, against the oppressive readership. But that oppression is as vague as the play, even when represented by The Man (Zack Griffiths), who spends the majority of time watching from the wings and walking heavily behind the three prongs of audience seating. The subject of Reader isn't strong enough for us to get more than the most minimal of connections, which is a shame, as this is a professional production, with very talented workers. It's the same problem One Year Lease faced with last season's Iphegenia Crash Land Falls; but at least they're trying.