Fool for Love drags into horrors of the American Dream

Photo by Rich Ryan

Sam Shepard compressed several plays worth of insight into the American psyche and what it means to be a “man” in his early 1980s masterpiece, Fool for Love. Over the course of an hour, we get an intense window into the lives of four disparate characters all trying to find a piece of the “American Dream.”

Dark & Stormy, never shy about intense character studies or difficult tales, dives head first into Shepard’s twisting tales with largely positive results.

This is the third production of the show I’ve seen over the years, with the previous two both being at the Jungle Theater. In fact, it was the very first show I saw at the venerable theater, back in the 1990s when it was in a little shoebox of a theater on Lake Street.

Dark and Stormy’s flexible space brings the action right into the audience’s laps, even more so than that production from two decades ago. Now, the hot and cold relationship between Eddie and May plays out just a few feet away, and the Old Man rocks silently on his chair just as close to the action.

I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. Eddie and May are longtime lovers whose relationship has flamed out. May lives in a nothing town somewhere in the American southwest, and cowboy Eddie has traveled hundreds of miles out of his way to try and win her back.

This isn’t some rom-com though. The pair have… issues that run deeply throughout their relationship. A lot of those are down to the Old Man, who haunts their memories. In fact, it is never quite clear if this is something the Old Man is imagining, or that his presence in their lives is so strong that they can’t shake his influence when they are together.

Another man enters into this three-way dance. He is Martin, a young and somewhat gentle soul who is romancing May. The hard-nosed and jealous Eddie enters into a bit of a “man-off” with Martin, and May finds herself torn between the fury of her previous love and the safer harbors of Martin’s.

Sara Marsh and James Rodriguez bring an appropriate amount of heat as May and Eddie, but it is the two other actors that really make this an intriguing production. Patrick Coyle’s steely intensity, present even when he is just watching the proceedings and drinking from a Styrofoam cup, is arresting and his presence looms (as it should) over the whole show.

Antonio Duke brings a fresh look to Martin, who often comes off as just a wallflower; one of the mythical “snowflakes” folks complain about. Duke, however, offers up some inner strength that Martin usually doesn’t have. There are signs that a tough life has given him some additional steel behind the polite façade.

Mel Day does a solid job in directing, though the opening scene – when Eddie spends all of his energy to convince May to come back – needed some additional space and time to really sink in. The play rushes by quickly, and a few extra moments to ground us to the main characters would help the rest of the action hit harder.

For information and tickets, visit online.

The Red Shoes joyfully tramples all under foot

Photo by Ron Ravensborg.

Joel Sass has found kindred spirits at Open Eye Figure Theatre.

The two seem like naturals. Sass' inventive stagings and oft off-kilter work matches perfectly with Open Eye's sense of outlandish adventure, often in tiny sizes. Those shared interests certainly come to a head in The Red Shoes, Sass' masterful deconstruction of a Hans Christian Andersen tale.

There's no fairy kingdom here. Instead, we get a gritty, film-noir-like take on the tale, as a single woman holes up in a grungy-beyond-grunge apartment.

There, hemmed in by a nosy landlady, an eager-beaver delivery boy, and a mysterious woman in a trenchcoat, she endlessly recounts a murder that may have taken place in the same apartment, with occasional breaks to put on her red shoes and, as David Bowie tells us, dances the blues.

That all of these characters are brought to life by Kimberly Richardson (with the aid of several puppeteers and body doubles) just adds an extra layer of theatrical spice. Her nimble physicality and ability to shift from broad humor to tense drama to outright terror in a matter of moments is put through the full test here.

Now tack on Sass' own sense of invention and play. His set is full of clever nooks and crannies that both aid Richardson's quick changes, but deepen the word. Of course the landlady speaks through a pipe with a flapping valve for a mouth. Of course the tiny diorama that Richardson uses to reenact the mysterious crime is the apartment writ small. Of course the various clues and newspaper articles on the wall move and change as the play unfolds, serving as title cards for each scene in the play.

It's a delirious, giddy, enthralling, terrific piece of theater that isn't going to make complete sense without some thought after. Even then, the exact meaning is somewhat obscured. So be it. Life in the big city doesn't always make sense, even when you are dressed to kill with your best red shoes on.

The Red Shoes runs through March 25. Visit online for more information.