Art Imitates Life in DAVID'S PLAY
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| The cast of David's Play. |
In Tom Rowan's latest show, David's Play, five college friends reunite for the Broadway debut of one of their members. However, the real story circles around the character who isn't there: the sixth friend of the group, David, who disappeared several years ago and whose life continues to affect those he left behind.
Taking place over the course of about twelve hours, secrets are revealed, old romances revisited and new ones kindled, and the question of what sort of life we build after the promises we make to our matriculated selves is asked.
Amanda (Callee Miles) and Leo (Joseph Dean Anderson) the most theatrically successful of the friends have settled for what they can get in the arts: as a lead dancer and a theatre critic respectively, both of whom had to sacrifice children for career. Meanwhile, Molly (Katie Ailion) has given up acting, as she repeatedly protests, for a happy life as a housewife in New Jersey. Barry (Alex Gagne) is still pursuing the dream: passing out leaflets in the day, working the comedy clubs at night, and literally living in a closet otherwise. While Ian (Morgan Hahn) has retreated from the bright lights and big city to do well in a limited capacity for himself as a theatre teacher in Nebraska. He arrives with a friend and romantic prospect, Joshua (Will Valles) - who, as the other friends point out, is in some ways being used as a substitute for David himself (Avery Whitted), who appears in a dream to Ian, reliving his wild adventures that perhaps burned too brightly for this earth.
Greg Pragel, last seen directing 36 Juniper, seems to be making a career out of these intimate modern dramas. His touch is light but evident from an opening montage chronicling the change from graduating idealists through to real life people, all the while setting up a clever use of the limited Chain Theater stage. His blocking, which might have easily had everyone simply sitting and chatting for two hours straight, instead flows naturally along the lines of an all-night party. His signature is always effortless elegance.
The cast works as an ensemble, even managing to make David's one scene not gimmicky but inevitable. The standout, of course, is Morgan Hahn as Ian - the semi-closeted protagonist of the play, who works through his unresolved yearning for David through attempting to revive his memory through the titular play: a script that David seems to have written for his friends and left behind for them to find. As David himself, Avery Whitted is full of spark and fire, a good contrast to Will Valles' gentle Joshua. Alex Gagne as Barry embraces the lifelong clown of the group, while Katie Ailion brings real pain and resignation to her role of the woman who gave up the dream of an art that has no place for her. Callee Miles (last seen as Horatio in Hamlet Isn't Dead's Hamlet, opposite Pragel's feeling Laertes) paired with Joseph Dean Anderson as the only married couple, Amanda and Leo, give a convincing Sondheim-esque Upper West Side portrayal, betraying true emotion whenever they touch on the abortion that haunts their marriage still.
David's Play is a well-made play, running at a tight two hours, with naturalistic language by Tom Rowan. The build up in act one, leading to the revelations of all the secrets which must come out in act two is well done, although the revelations in act two could have used a bigger punch. A few scenes are elongated in the second half - such as Barry trying to make a pass at his old flame, Molly - while scenes that might have been more compelling, such as Leo and Amanda working out their feelings about starting a family, aren't shown at all.
The trouble is that theme of the play is muddied beneath the trivia of naturalistic theatre. Is this a play about what a life in the art costs? About growing up? About giving up our younger desires? There's a more poignant play in here, but the second half of the play hasn't quite hit its point yet. Picasso famously said that art is never finished, merely abandoned. Here's to hoping that Rowan hasn't abandoned David's Play, but uses this Fringe production to delve even deeper for the show's next presentation.
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