Pride Week production plays it safe. And sleepy.
White noise. It's the dull hum of one vibration following the next in a pattern that can be relied upon to be exactly what you expect of it once it's been established. It ain't Mozart, but it's not a jackhammer either. For many, it's an effective sleep aid.
The Pride on the Plaza/Santa Fe Playhouse production of Santa Fean writer/director CJ Bacino's new play
Self-Made Men
is the dramatic equivalent. The politically innocuous domestic drama involving a gay male couple, Brent (Adam McLean) and Thomas (Bryn Burch) and
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Brent's old boyfriend, David (Justin Lenderking) from Iowa City, is imminently predictable and lacking in any variation that would bring a crescendo from the din.
Brent is a dependent sort who's moved to the big city of Chicago and has latched on to Thomas, a burly Stanley Kowalski of an abstract artist who, we can tell, is going nowhere despite Brent's pipe dreams and loving management of his man's career. Thomas is unaware of the romantic history between Brent and his visiting friend, David, a college professor and the script's symbol for "Intellect." David disapproves of Thomas's violent behavior and bad treatment of his friend. In a scene that Tennessee Williams does better, David declares, "He's like an animal. He's animalistic," and the plot goes on to show that sister Blanche is indeed no lily.
In a series of tiresome conversations regarding Emotion vs. Intellect, Thomas (Emotion) gets David to get in touch with his guilt by creating and discussing art. Guilt is an emotion with which Thomas, a tomcat by nature, is intimately acquainted. David argues that we all are
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self-made men in need of taking control of our lives. Of course, David is as out of control as the next character and eventually succumbs to the manimal we all knew was lurking within him.
The play ends much as it began, with all three characters rather ruined, yet still firmly entrenched in their original positions. Unfortunately, there is not much catharsis in the let-it-all-hang-out scene at the end because everything has been dangled in front of our faces from the beginning. Perhaps this fatalism in the plot accounts for the fatalism in the acting, which suffers from monotony of vocal tone and gesture in each of the characters. Raised voices alone cannot compensate for lack of color and deviation in the emotional landscape; it's just peddling faster without changing gears.
Like the hum of the air conditioner this summer,
Self-Made Men
is not necessarily a bad thing; just don't expect it to do more than reliably drone along.
Santa Fe Reporter