By Cynthia Citron
SANTA MONICA – There is something decidedly peculiar about the old couple who live deep in the forest in a cottage that they built themselves. They have no electricity, no telephone, and no water. “Who needs water when we have a beautiful river so close by?” she says.
But that’s not what’s peculiar about them. They seem to be frozen in the amber light that permeates their home. And they appear to have lived there for centuries. But their relationship to each other seems too fey, too unreal, too terminally cutesy, especially after being alone together for so many years. He gambols around like a lecherous leprechaun, continually declaring his lust for her. She responds with a bawdy coyness of her own and willingly plops into bed with him at every opportunity. The rest of the time she makes pies.
Nancy Berggren as “Old Eva” and Shelly Kurtz as “Old Zak” are delightful actors and they do the best that can be done with a play that has them delivering long repetitive soliloquies on the glories of nature, the dappled light of the sun, the murmuring of the river. Nice as poetry, but awfully difficult as dialogue.
The play is Come Sundown, the first play by Santa Monica-based writer, director, and actor Anthony Cronin, but Cronin has enough stage experience and credentials to know better. His poetic magic sticks like peanut butter, especially when the old couple parades their lust and language in front of visitors. Too much like showing off. Aren’t we having fun! Aren’t we adorable?
Multiply this by two. There is a “Young Eva” (Sofia Yepes) and a “Young Zak” (Bram Barouh) who, unfortunately, are even less able to carry off the magic. Yepes is wooden and prim; Barouh is competent, but doesn’t seem to be the sort of man who would be content to live in the wilderness for a lifetime or two.
Two other actors give the play the action and plot that it needs. Timothy George Connolly plays Tom Kelly, an activist lawyer who worries about the environment (“One road in the wilderness is like a scratch on a CD,” he says), and Jeison Azali plays Mortimer Roach, the developer who wants to buy the old couple’s land and build high-end second homes on it. But Roach is not a villain. He wants to do it nicely, with minimum stress on the environment. So the only conflict is how to convince the old people to sell their land.
And finally, there is Noelle Cannon (Shane Adler), the lawyer associate of Tom Kelly, who goes from curtly aloof to curiously cutesy after some magic administered by Old Eva. Noelle is aloof because she was raped as a young girl, Old Eva tells Old Zack in a throw-away expository line as brief as I’ve just reported it to you. Since it’s never mentioned again, it seems a totally unnecessary insertion in the plot. And a jarring diversion to a play that is otherwise dedicated to being ethereal and spiritual.
Karen Landry does a good job of directing here, and Cliff Wagner has designed a beautiful homey set, but these two elements aren’t enough to save a play that is just trying too hard to be enchanting.
Come Sundown will continue its world premiere run at the Ruskin Group Theatre, 3000 Airport Road, in Santa Monica, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 through May 14th. Call (310) 397-3244 for reservations.
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Citron is Los Angeles bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World. She may be reached at cynthia.citron@sdjewishworld.com