By Carol Davis
SOLANA BEACH, California — Melissa James Gibson’s new play This is on stage at The North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach through the end of the month. Gibson’s play revolves around the lives of four 30-something best friends who are in mid-life crisis but have problems articulating what they want for themselves and or from each other.
In 2009 Charles Isherwood of the New York Times declared This to be Ms. Gibson’s finest play to date and also the best new play to open Off-Broadway that fall. Long-time Sledgehammer director Kirsten Brandt, who teaches at UC Santa Cruz and was brought in just to direct this production, likens the spoken rhythms of This to those in Shakespeare.
There is no denying that Brandt is a masterful director. I’ve seen most of her work over her years spent in San Diego. Production values run high at the North Coast Repertory Theatre’s production. The This or the emptiness they feel and the ‘new’ now they are seeking, define each and every character. However, their problems run the gamut of soap-opera proportions and might appeal to but a limited audience.
Tom is a cabinetmaker who doesn’t let his wife or friends forget that he is the only blue-collar worker in the group. He also comes on to their friend Jane who has not stopped grieving over the loss of her husband almost a year before. He and his wife Marrell just had a baby and from the looks of things they are pretty babied out because the infant doesn’t sleep more than 15 minutes at a time and they both complain to Jane that the marriage has been sexless for a long time.
Richard Blair does as much as he can as the disgruntled Tom, and Judith Scott is wonderfully versatile as a jazz singer in a club. As well as being the harried wife, she confesses to Jane that she wants to have sex with men other than her husband.
This sends Tom to Jane’s door while Marrell swoons over her friend Jean-Pierre (Matt Thompson) a French “Doctor Without Borders” who is in the city (New York) for a conference on disease and starvation in Africa.
Marrell invites him to the house to fix him up with Jane. Thompson’s JP is amused at the pettiness of the comings and goings of Marrell and her friends, especially Alan who complains that his life is Dinky/Dinky. To which he has to explain that it means of no importance.
Alan (Andrew Ableson) is gay and Jewish (typically stereotypical). He is a mnemonic (he remembers every conversation he’s heard which comes in handy later on in the play) and wants to change his life completely. One of the suggestions he comes up with is to add another letter “l” to the spelling of “Alan.” He’s been waiting for a wakeup call to make things better, hasn’t flossed in weeks and calls his life dinky. He also drinks too much and is Jane’s best friend.
Jane is a poet and schoolteacher, recently widowed and can’t seem to get herself out of the doldrums. She has a 9-year-old daughter she forgets to pick up at school. Her husband’s ashes are still sitting in the urn in a paper bag in her apartment. And when she forgets the date her husband died, she calls her self a “bad widow.” Courtney Corey is on target with Jane.
We catch up with them in Tom and Marrell’s home (Marty Burnett’s multi purpose set does the job of creating several locations) shushing each other for fear of waking the baby (“They just put the baby down”) while getting ready to play a party game that Jane wants no part of but is coerced into playing anyway. Her friends thought if she played the game she would forget, if for a short time, her grief and it might be good for her to have some fun.
The rules of the game are simple when you know them: You ask a series of questions to get at the story the rest have made up. If the question asked ends in a vowel, the answer is NO; if it ends in a consonant the answer is Yes and if it ends in Y the answer is Maybe. Interestingly enough, this was one of the most lighthearted scenes in the play.
Funny thing though, Jane didn’t think it very funny because she thought the joke was on her as it was inching up to events that felt strangely about her life, even though it was merely coincidental and could be about anything. It was after this game debacle that Tom found himself outside Jane’s door.
Someday, perhaps, they all will realize that life isn’t as neatly packaged as they thought it would be when they were younger and starry-eyed in love. Regrets abound! Everyone in mid-life crisis feels that their disappointments and betrayals are more important than the next guy’s. Maybe so. And while the entire cast moved through them with ease and confidence, I found it difficult to really care about any of them or the ‘this-is’ in their lives.
On the other hand Brandt does offer an opportunity to watch a well-balanced cast do its best with Gibson’s take on the thirty-something generation. You be the judge.
See you at the theatre.
Dates: through April 29th
Organization: North Coast Repertory Theatre
Phone: 858-481-1055
Production Type: Domestic Comedy
Where: 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive #D, Solana Beach, CA92075
Ticket Prices: $32.00-$49.00
Web: northcoastrep.org
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Davis is a San Diego-based theatre critic. She may be contacted at carol.davis@sdjewishworld.com