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Borderline States; Wintershock
((Theatre Theater, Backroom Stage, Hollywood; 25 seats; $ 10 top))
Annette ... Lesley Kyle
Willa ... Nancy Kerr
Wintershock
Cy ... David Muir
Zelda ... Elizabeth Cava
Two one-acts by Melissa James Gibson showcase an intelligent, budding playwright and a young, fervent cast. While rich in metaphor and offering strong moments, the plays feel like opening scenes to something bigger.
"Borderline States" is set in a bus station in a western Canadian town as the anxious-to-leave Willa (Nancy Kerr) talks to a composed and hopeful young woman, Annette (Lesley Kyle).
With time on their hands, the two strangers discover their commonalities--they both have men trouble, for one. Willa is running from her boyfriend, who has choked her freedom. Annette waits for a man who may be on the arriving bus.
Turns out she's been waiting every day, well dressed, for two years. She had had a glorious night with him and he had promised to return.
When Willa discovers Annette has a gun--ostensibly for shooting the guy when he arrives--Willa makes it her duty to shake Annette out of her stupor and show her the realities of love and the senselessness of waiting.
Kyle makes the most of her role, revealing the fragility of a lonely woman's porcelain veneer.
Kerr's Willa comes on like a wild horse in a china shop, only to find within herself the delicate touch to help put Annette back together.
Playwright Gibson directs the scene well, pitting two unlike personalities against each other and giving them action.
"Wintershock," however, directed by Carter Cole, provides a classic example of the stasis into which two-character plays can fall. There are just two stationary people--a husband and wife, talking in rockers on a porch.
Cyrus (David Muir) and Zelda (Elizabeth Cava) recently lost their newborn baby because of multiple birth defects brought on by having hemophilia type B.
Still in shell shock--wintershock, as Cyrus calls it--the two talk at, rather than to, each other.
Their dialogue moves simultaneously in different directions. Cyrus blames the "bad blood" on Zelda's side of the family. Zelda offers a poem she wrote in which a mother slept and a father kept away.
Their words have academic precision but little echo of real people in such a situation. These people, exceedingly polite, control what should be emotional chaos.
"Wintershock's" supposed catharsis is self-generated out of spontaneous dialogue combustion. The flames are false.
Although the stage is quite small--a black box theater with a few chairs--the technical side comes off with precision.
Kirk Smart's acoustic and electric guitar music positions each play with the right mood. The set designs by Jeff Bell provide an effective simplicity.
Sets, Jeff Bell; costumes, Kindred Spirits. Reviewed Aug. 5, 1992; runs through Aug. 26.
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