REVIEWS ...
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
Stalker play finds meaning in the moment
By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com
With two of her plays getting high-profile openings a week apart in New York and London, with another being produced in regional theaters all over the country, and with major commissions from American and British theaters, Rebecca Gilman is one of the hottest playwrights of the moment.
Want to know why? Check out the season-opening production of Boy Gets Girl at GableStage. Once you take Gilman's dizzying ride from awkward pleasantry and humor to unbearably dangerous tension, you'll have your answer.
With our widespread fear of an unseen but very real menace, Gilman's play about stalking resonates in ways it probably wouldn't have before Sept. 11. Stalking is, after all, a one-on-one variant of terrorism.
Gilman swiftly, surely draws us into this interpersonal nightmare by charting the experiences of Theresa Bedell (Pamela Roza), a whip-smart New York magazine writer who toys with the idea of resuscitating her moribund personal life by going on a blind date.
Tony Ross (David Cirone), a "nice" guy who works with computers, is younger, not as book smart, full of faux gallantry that speaks of a too-much, too-soon desperation.
Theresa registers the bad fit by the second date and tries to let Tony down gently by pleading an all-consuming career. Tony says he hears her, but he's lying. Theresa has just become his newest obsession.
Theatrical but with a cinematic flow to her writing (Boy Gets Girl has 18 scenes in its two acts), Gilman is a wonderful fit for GableStage and director Joseph Adler, who is as comfortable working in film as he is in theater. Nate Rausch's increasingly ominous music bridges scenes of escalating tension, as the focus shifts among five very different playing areas that artful set designer Lyle Baskin has carved from the theater's wide, narrow stage.
Adler's cast delivers performances that range from quirky to amusing, nurturing to searing -- and, in Cirone's case, a slight oddness that morphs into something far more terrifying. Empathetic through a hard edge, Roza imbues Theresa with a brusqueness that gets transformed into anger and, finally, a sickened realization that her life will never be -- can never be -- the same.
Barry Tarallo and Mark Swaner radiate concern as Theresa's fellow journalists, and Autumn Horne turns the part of Theresa's kooky/inept young assistant into a comedic gem. George Schiavone is almost cuddly as a Russ Meyer-style "filmmaker," and Miriam Kulick offers both no-nonsense advice and sympathy as a police officer guiding Theresa through her ordeal.
As balanced as Gilman is in her treatment of each character, there are missteps in both the play and the GableStage production. Now and then, the dialogue begins to sound more like a sociological treatise than believable conversation, and a play that should end with a wallop just stops in an abrupt and understated way.
Too, Adler's unscripted decision to show Tony trashing Theresa's place -- something Cirone doesn't have the time to do adequately -- yanks our focus from victim to stalker, when Gilman's intention is to have the audience experience these violations through Theresa's eyes.
Even so, Boy Gets Girl is a powerful study of the way terror can transform a life. What could be more relevant?
Christine Dolen is The Herald's theater critic.
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
Boy Gets Girl an effective, relentless thriller
By Jack Zink, Theater Critic
If you didn't lock your doors last night, you will after seeing Boy Gets Girl at the GableStage in Coral Gables. Director Joe Adler punches through your "it can't happen to me" veil with Rebecca Gilman's unrelenting drama about a stalker who won't give up, and doesn't get caught.
Boy Gets Girl traces the destruction of a successful woman's life when she brushes lightly with an obsessive stranger. In the GableStage's small playhouse, it seems as if the woman's nerve endings are wired to each of the 138 seats. If Boy Gets Girl slops around a little too much structurally, who cares? Few would notice while leading lady Pamela Roza turns into Victims-R-Us.
Roza portrays Theresa, a writer for a hot magazine in New York whose life is pretty much together, despite her former beau's departure for an exotic job halfway around the world. Theresa goes on a blind date to get back in the social swing. But the signals aren't good and she cuts it off, tastefully, before things can get personal.
But Tony doesn't see it that way. He sends flowers, tries to bridge a misunderstanding. He calls, gets persistent, then ardent, then abusive in a blink, and threatening. Theresa's office staff gets sucked into the vortex, and her boss winds up with some fears of his own.
And that's just the first act.
The play rides on the leading lady's reactions, and the manner in which the situation creeps into every corner of her life, every relationship she has. Roza, who has blossomed into a major talent the past few seasons (mostly, but not always, at the GableStage), delivers a gripping performance that holds the show on track whenever it seems to want to get lost in some thematic alley.
To ratchet up the tension, there's David Cirone as the stalker in his best performance to date. He has only a few key moments at the start in which to light the fuse, which must keep burning without him for much of the show. Cirone hits the mark with every line, each a slight stammer, each an overture, each perceptibly raising the stakes.
Barry Tarallo is the sympathetic and supportive boss who becomes a possible target. Mark Swaner is a writer in the office who finds himself tarred with the stalker's image when he tries to help out. Autumn Horne is a dim-bulb secretary who falls for the stalker's con artistry, and unwittingly helps him continue his agenda. Miriam Kulick is the cop who has plenty of advice to offer, but not much reassurance.
The action weaves among a variety of locales, all of them vividly depicted on the GableStage's shallow, wide stage. Lyle Baskin's scenery includes a stylish high-rise office, a dingy studio, Theresa's apartment, a bar, a restaurant and a hospital ward. All are lit carefully by Jeff Quinn to maintain separate senses of place, and Daniela Schwimmer's costumes all give accurate snapshots of what to expect from the characters who live, and lust, in them. Nate Rausch's spooky sound design and creepy incidental music sharpen the edge on the razor.
Providing a contrast to the nerve-wracking action is George Schiavone as a movie director who specializes in soft-core porn, the subject of a magazine article Theresa is supposed to write. The assignment is a slick conceit that allows the playwright to deal indirectly with the sexual issues underlying the plot about the victim and her predator. It's also a cheap, superficial and very effective tool for comic relief. Although the role is out in left field, Schiavone makes it a showcase turn.
Even with the comic sidetrips, Boy Gets Girl is a gut-churning thriller that keeps the knot in your stomach wound tight, so much so that it's forgivable when the story plows into a brick wall after nearly two hours, and just stops rather than ends.
Jack Zink can be reached at jzink@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4706.
