February 2012

9, 10, 11, 17, 18, 19*, 24, 25    8PM, *except 19th 2PM

REVIEWED BY DONNA BAILEY-THOMPSON

CRIMINAL HEARTS is a multi-layered play. Some have described it as a Comedy/Drama. Unbridled fluff it is not. It demands a good cast and direction and attentive listeners. The laugh lines are products of the script. And, the script is as tight as a focused therapy session.

In almost total darkness, the play opens with a tall person climbing in through a window and tripping over tin cans. On a mattress slapped against the floor, another person bolts upright. This is how we meet the lead actors and they meet each other.

ATA     What? Hello? Oh, my God. Who's in here? Somebody's in here. Oh, my God. Don't hurt me. Don't kill me. I have eighty dollars, but I don't know where my purse is. I could write you a check. Tell me your name, and I'll write you a check. I have jewelry, but it's dumb stuff. I was robbed last year, they got the jewelry. You can have my jewelry though. I'll give you my jewelry and the eighty dollars. Listen, I'm frightened, I'm very frightened. I'm suppressing a scream here.

BO       Shut up.

ATA      Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You are in here.

[Yet to be discovered is a gun.]

ATA is the poster woman for neuroticism; the most restricting of her many complaints is agoraphobia. She is verbal to a fault. She subsists on Dr. Pepper and pizzas, ordered in. She is educated, well-read and until recently enjoyed one aspect of her marriage -- the funds to be smartly coifed and attired in designer togs.

Bo is Ata's opposite. She's at home in baggy pants, chomping on gum, lying, stealing and accentuating her uncultured voice with liberal eruptions of F bombs. She has returned to Ata's swanky condo to rip it off but Ata's poor excuse for a husband, Wib, beat her to it. 

Bumbling their way through the pitfalls of being women, these Felix and Oscar alternatives find rationales in all the wrong places. But, what the hell; it has a way of working for them.

The guys are, well, guys. Robbie is Bo's accomplice in crime. He drives the truck weighted with pillage and plunder. Ata comes to fancy him but at this desperate juncture in her life, she's to be cut some slack. The slime ball husband, Wib, who is dumping her, may need to free up more time to seduce scores of easily persuaded bimbos -- and to escape Ata's ongoing apology, "I'm sorry." Those two words can pass as her mantra. We know about elephants in the living room; Ata's elephant lives within her. "I have more problems than I should demographically have."

Bo's liberal dispensing of F bombs disturbs Ata. She accuses Bo of "debasing the language."

BO        I'm doing what?

ATA      Swearing. Profanity. Don't you realize that's the last resort of people with a limited vocabulary?

BO        I got a limited vocabulary.

Wib has played diabolical games with Ata's head. When Ata noticed that Wib was coming home with less underwear, she asked a friend "how a lawyer could come home with one sock and she said, 'Nooners.'" Ata confronted him. She describes the scene for Bo.

ATA       Panties," I said, "panties, you have panties in your raincoat pocket!" "Gosh." he says, slapping his forehead like this, "Gosh, thanks for reminding me. They're evidence in a case, I wanted you to take a look and tell me what store might carry them!"

With Bo hanging on to every word, Ata speaks wondrously of living in ignorance for twelve years. By hiring a private detective "it all came out, six simultaneous affairs."

ATA       I started having trouble going out of the house, my heart would pound, I would fight for breath. If I got to the elevator I would start sweating, get dizzy, get a terrible headache. I would have to lean against the wall when the door opened, I couldn't get out. I saw doctors . . .

BO        So, like in a strange way I can dig it, you know? You want to go out and you can't and I want to go out and I can't.

ATA       You're afraid to go out?

BO        Yeah, I'm afraid to go out. You get in the elevator, bingo, they got your money, your shoes, an' you're down on the floor gettin' porked, right? Outside we got numbers runners, skag merchants, crazies, kids this high passing angle dust and sensimilla weed, everybody scramblin', carrying a piece, a blade, a razor in their cheek, it's a fuckin' circus, you see what I mean? ...

ATA       What are they doing to us? ... That's what I want to know. Why are they doing this to us!

At this point, Scene One still has a few minutes to go. Criminal Hearts offers a mix of moods -- dark humor, righteous anger, pathos, funny moments. sweet moments, hints of slapstick -- and more words than Mozart has notes.

Director Kelly Seip writes: "As with most comedies, it really is a sad, tragic tale of wounded people, broken people, and people who should be broken....[they] make each of them better than they ever could have been on their own." Seip prevents Criminal Hearts from flying apart and instead she has grounded a pithy play freshened by dedicated actors.

Prolific playwright Jane Martin (a pseudonym; she/he offers no hints about her/his identity) gives thumbnail descriptions of how she visualizes her characters. 

"WIB -- a man in the worst sense of the word." As portrayed by Mark Proulx, he's a lecher with an insatiable appetite. Proulx thanks Director Kelly Seip "for giving him this chance to channel his inner scumbag." He is appropriately disgusting.

"ROBBIE is Bo's getaway man. He has low-down sex appeal and loves malt balls." Actor Allen Nott lives up to the playwright's description. He's a would-be Lothario (he does some of his best work in Ata's closet) but he's not in Wib's league.

As for BO -- "A grifter in good times, a burglar in bad. Truth is the least of her worries." Vanda Doyle gives a nuanced performance; she's nowhere near as tough as she wants people to think she is. She's scared. Bo's mind is ready to be awakened, and Vanda Doyle's Bo is ready to oblige -- with truth and trust.

And then there is "ATA, a romantic agoraphobic in her mid-30s. She is in a lot of trouble." Indeed she is! With her intensity, her wacky short circuiting, Liz Leshine's Ata keeps the audience semi-prepared for whatever her nut-case self will say but her mouth lets fly with one surprise after another. The most coherent collection of well-chosen words occurs in the last act  when Lehine's Ata dips into the kitchen sink and soars with confidence  using words that excoriate especially sarcasm whose definition includes "to tear flesh."  She rips it.

Its title, Criminal Hearts doesn't do the play justice. Within Ata's vocabulary, there's a title hiding that connotes C.H. is more than a romp but a play of substance. The Suffield Players have scored again.  Bravo!

  

HOME ART MOVIES THEATER BOOKS MUSIC TALENT DANCE POETRY POTPOURRI SUPPORT

All rights reserved.
© The Arts, etc., Copyright 2009- 2012