A few years ago, I was browsing through Samuel French and Dramatists, searching for a Christmas-themed play, particularly a Christmas-themed play with gay characters. One of them I stumbled upon was Comfort and Joy by Jack Heifner. I never actually read it, but I put it on a mental list of plays I might do someday. Fast forward to fall of 2016, and I see that Twilight Theatre Company—arguably the most daring and socially progressive community theatre in the PDX metro—is producing that play. Now, as a rule, when there is a production of one of those plays that I have on the mental list of possibilities, I don’t go see it. The reason being that I don’t want to see someone else’s artistic vision for the piece, and then be unduly influenced by it later. It’s part of how I try to maintain my own greatest level of artistic integrity in my work.
But I made
an exception in this case.
Programs
were not available opening night because of a misunderstanding with their print
shop; this upset me because I feel like that’s part of what you pay for and
what you should get with the price of a ticket. Any theatre unable to provide a
program should offer to mail their patrons one (a real paper one, not the PDF)
at no cost. I have a wonderful box full of 25 years of programs. I always save
them, and they’re one of my favorite things. The reason I bring it up here is
that I won’t be able to name as many names when discussing the play, unless
they are on the Facebook event page; at least the actors are.
Comfort and
Joy takes us back at least 20 years to a time when civil liberties for LGBT
people were not what they are now, and many in the gay community were still
constantly mourning the loss of more and more loved ones by the AIDS epidemic. Its
lovable protagonists, Scott (Andy Roberts, who brought joy to HART audiences
two years ago in White Christmas) and Tony) are a happily
partnered couple, living in a lavish home (not so lavish, actually—more on that
later) in the Hollywood Hills, awaiting the arrival of Scott’s harpy mom, Doris
(Angela Michtom) for Christmas Eve dinner. Problem: relations between mother
and son are already strained, and to add to the festivities, Tony’s obnoxious
siblings, Gina and Victor (Adriana Gantzer and Josiah Green,
respectively) come to call. She’s pregnant and apparently homeless, and he’s
been dumped by his Christian extremist wife, who’s taken off with the kids. To
top off this Christmas tree of chaos is a freakish fairy (David Alan Morrison)
in silver tights, ghastly blue Crocks and a mess of garish makeup and tattered
wings. And yes, the word “fairy” seems to have a double meaning here. He is there
to manipulate the characters and shape the outcome of their lives.
If you
haven’t already guessed it by now, this is a comedy, but it has its dramatic moments
played out with mixed success. I want to single out Morrison’s work as the
Fairy because his job is the most challenging. Throughout the play, there are
numerous flashbacks to scenes from the various other characters’ lives, and
Morrison—as the Fairy—has to occupy all the characters from the past that are
being represented, all of which have a huge impact on who these people are
today and the demons that haunt them. Morrison brings real depth to all of
these characters and showcases an impressive range as an actor. What makes his
job even more challenging is that director Jason A. England was not entirely
successful in making these sudden scene shifts flow in a clear, concise, and
coherent way. The shifts in time were jarring and clunky, causing the audience
to have to pause for a moment to figure out, “Okay, where are we and who are we
talking to?” This, in spite of an ingenious, hilarious, and very timely
lighting design element. (I don’t want to give it away, but this lighting
effect, if used in other future shows, will never be as funny of a joke as it
is right now.)
As I
said before, the two lovers at the center of the story are indeed lovable, and
that wouldn’t be possible without the fine performances of Roberts and Torres.
What’s interesting here is that you never see the full extent of the chemistry
between these men because we’re seeing them on an extraordinarily stressful day
when a thousand things get in the way of that. And yet, there is clear proof
that the chemistry exists. You get a glimpse here and a glimpse there, and you
know from these nuanced performances that these two people have overcome
challenging lives and arrived at the kind of happiness that the rest of their
family has no ability to understand.
As
Dorris, Michtom was appropriately grating, perhaps even a little too much so.
Eventually, we see her humanity, but it takes a little longer than it should.
This is not solely a script problem. A director and actor can find ways to reveal
softness in a character, at least to the audience, if not to the other people
on stage. I found there was a similar problem with sister Gina, even though she
doesn’t show up until the second act. But the most problematic performance for
me was Green’s Victor, who was constantly delivering his lines in a weepy,
drunken slur. I would rather he had burst into full blown tears at various
points instead of that constant vocal affectation.
The
greatest problem I had in terms of the design elements was the set. It had the
look of a very generic box set that could be interchanged with hundreds of
other living rooms in hundreds of other community theatre productions. It was
not remotely evocative of what a Hollywood producer’s residence would be, nor
did the décor really reveal much about who the occupants of this home were. On
the makeup front, the Doris character was supposed to have had a recent
facelift; there seemed to be no effort taken to convey this.
But
plays are about people, not nearly as much as what they wear or the places they
occupy (though those things can be important sometimes). If you care about the
people on stage, then the production is doing its job. Relatives can be
annoying at times, but one of the things the holidays are about is being able
to overlook those faults, forgive, and recognize the things we have in common.
All of the performers in Comfort and Joy were able to conjure moments of
empathy and compassion for their characters, which made up for the other inconsistencies.
No comments:
Post a Comment