[theatre]

Political Unrest:
ByChance presents thought-provoking theater with ‘Two Rooms’

by: Shea Carver

“What is freedom? What does it mean to have hope?” They’re questions that have been at the forefront of our lives for centuries. Yet their profundity has hit closer to home over the past seven years, as we’ve embarked on terrorist attacks, Middle Eastern wars and loss of life that seems never-ending. Such are only a few reasons why Lee Blessing’s “Two Rooms,” written in 1988, seems more than appropos to be hitting Thalian Hall Studio Theater’s stage, thanks to ByChance Productions, through July 20th.

Evocatively directed by Tony Moore, “Two Rooms” is a character piece, focusing on the intense thought-provoking disparity that a husband and wife—Michael (Sam Robison) and Lainie (Annya Broderick)—face once the patriarch is taken hostage in Beirut, Lebanon. While teaching at the American University in a foreign land, the professor is abducted and relegated to an empty cell block, handcuffed and blind-folded, wherein he’s allowed one restroom visit a day, a shower a month, and interaction only with himself, all of which include faux conversations with his wife. Lainie, a teacher back in the States, has simulated Michael’s captivity by rearranging his office and stripping it bare. Only a small rug remains, which she often lies on in attempt to grow closer to his situation; it is here where she converses with her imaginary husband.

Each are dealing with perpetual uncertainty over the course of three years, wondering, Will Michael live or die? Be brutally beaten or moved from place to place? Be set free or held captive forever more? With the help—or lack thereof, depending on how audiences choose to interpret the play—of a State Department official named Ellen (Susan Auten) and news journalist Walker (Mike O’Neil), “hope” for Michael’s return becomes the climactic characteristic turning the play’s every page, the character’s every motivation and the audience’s dissertation on U.S. and Middle Eastern affairs.

Sam Robison is a vision of how one would imagine a hostage: roughed up with disheveled hair and a thick beard, plagued by the notions of what the simple things in life once entailed. From the smell of a flower to the noise of a car passing by, Robison makes it clear how cut off he is from the small senses that freedom provides.

He deals with it the best he knows how: by verbalizing everything he can remember, revisiting moments and scenes in his life, talking them through to an absent Lainie. Most intriguing is how Robison plays a hostage not in an insanity-stricken nature that one may suspect a human to endure in a 4-by-4 concrete room. His calm morosity is only flinched by few moments of maniacal laughing, as he relives the day he was kidnapped. He doesn’t struggle with his captors; instead, he plays by the “rules” to avoid beatings as best as possible. What he does struggle with is internal—his own guilt of staying in Lebanon despite having had a chance to leave the university and return home.

Annya Borderick brings home a moving performance. Her struggle with living as a premature grieving widower or as an American activist, fighting the government in the face of the media for her husband’s safe return, maximizes with her placid grip on knowing how far to actually trust the two people who currently infiltrate her life. She has metaphorically been taken hostage by a journalist she thinks is out to create a story of accolade prominence and a government official assigned to just another “project” (one of the most real moments of the play shines through here, as dialogue between Lainie and Ellen alludes to how U.S. government sees hostage crises not as people under imminent danger but “projects” to be maintained as to not disrupt the inner-workings between the U.S. and Middle Eastern factions). Broderick ironically plays Lainie as each the government and the media seem to play our nation: “Keep your friends at arm’s length and your enemies in your pocket.” She’s torn and vulnerable; yet, her keen insight into others’ agendas provides her character depth. She’s strategic, despite being ill-advised at times.

Susan Auten plays Ellen like one would expect of any good government agent: She maintains rigid force and cold poise. She has practiced what to say, when to say it and enforces only the rules of the law, not the rules of human nature. At moments, it felt as if the play was calling on Ellen’s condolences for Lainie. Still, the force fell wayside, as Auten stayed steadfastly robotic and unapologetic in her role as only a government official assigned to make “right” decisions on a global scale, even if they fail miserably. She came across neatly calculating and washed of any emotion.
Mike O’Neil as news journalist Walker brought zeal and a handful of compassion to the play; perhaps something one wouldn’t expect of media personnel. He isn’t refined, yet he’s resolute in bringing the wrongdoings of the American government into the spotlight of a media frenzy. His role was very appealing to me—kind of like the underdog making it on the varsity team. His coercion in getting Lainie to fight back for her husband’s rescue became more than a job; it was a driving force that made me want to sit through each scene. Somewhere along the way, just as I became dependent on their dialogue, each the journalist and the grieving wife grew dependent on one another to delineate emotions, reasoning and plans of action. Their connection is the main thread binding the play with each successful seam.

My only quip remains in character transitions between rooms and scenes. Lights fell dark for changes to take place, which broke the show’s fluidity, and the procession of lengthy and heady dialogue that audiences need to digest. It may have been more effective to freeze frame the old while interjecting the new scenes at once, without frequent black-outs that seemingly jostle the mind, essentially working to numb emotions. If that’s the intent; I stand corrected. But the play is raw and bare, showcasing characters and sentiments that drive its essence. Most of the time, it works. However, when the final scene elicits the somber sounds of Coldplay, the play becomes more soap opera than political love story.

Still, it’s an educational production that raises more questions than answers—and without the help of CNN or MSNBC. Turn off the tube and grab a seat for its last run this weekend, July 16th-20th, 8pm. Tickets are $12; (910) 343-3664.