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Today I did something I haven't done for years. I attended some community theater. Let me preface my thoughts by saying I am something of a theater snob--one with my nose so high up in the air I expect to be tripped at any moment. Obviously, my expectations were not high. Community theater does not, in this artsnob's mind, translate to Quality Theatre. It's good my expectations were low, because technically this production was severely lacking. The lighting was, frankly, terrible. Distracting, unfocused, poorly hued, and frequently changing mid-scene for no reason whatsoever. Yet the performances were strikingly good, especially in contrast. All of the actors seemed supremely comfortable in their roles, and the characters did not seem contrived. At times I was so drawn into the action that I forgot I was watching a performace--I was instead eavesdropping on the conversations of others. Throughout the course of the afternoon, there were a couple of flubbed lines and a few important statements were rushed (or lost in the lighting), but overall the timing and pacing of the piece was impeccable.
The play, Wendy MacLeod's Sin, is ostensibly a modern morality tale. Throughout the first half of the play, the seemingly angelic Avery Bly is described as hovering over pre-earthquake 1989 San Francisco in her traffic helicopter, holding herself above the grisly and dirty desires of the human condition. Her avoidance of sin is presented as an avoidance of life. Repeatedly she is referred to as cold or frigid. Her unwillingness to wiggle a toe in the pool of the seven deadlies apparently makes her inhuman. Post-earthquake (or, The Second Act), the audience is supposed to watch Avery confront her demons, engage in a little good and healthy sin, and join the rest of us on planet earth. While she does pander to some baser instincts by the time the curtain falls, I don't feel that her character actually undergoes any actual change. The visual tableau revealing her transformation is supposed to be a reunion with her alcoholic husband, but she in no way takes him back. Her journey through lust, rage, gluttony, and grand theft auto doesn't teach her that continuing a marriage with a man who has been completely consumed by his demons is a good idea (and I agree). While she may be standing next to him, she is echoing the tune repeated throughout the play, "I love you, but unless you make a choice to get some help, I am leaving you." The moral lesson I take from this is that, as the character Helen* alluded, we're all fucked up and there isn't much we can do about it whether we sin or not so we might as well numb our pain with whatever makes us content. For some it is embracing the baser elements, for some it is the denial of the human experience, and I personally don't believe in either. In my personal opinion, the only thing we can do is grow, something of which these characters seemed incapable of grasping.
Whatever my issues with the script (and the lights), I am impressed by the Stagecoach folk. The quality of the performace was truly unexpected, and gave my theater-watching companion and I plenty of fodder for discussion over a post-play lunch/dinner.
*played to hilarious perfection by the lovely Angela Buffington
