In an audacious promo ploy, Innovocative Theatre’s Staci Sabarsky wrote a post today on Theatre Tampa Bay’s Facebook page that began like this:
“Maybe you shouldn’t see Keely and Du.”
To which I can emphatically respond, YES YOU SHOULD. I saw it last Saturday afternoon, and it is, in short, a must. And you’ve only got this weekend to get over to Stageworks' Channel District digs, where Innovocative is staging Jane Martin's 1993 play, a Pulitzer finalist that is as relevant in today's fraught climate as it ever was.
Not that it's what you’d call easy. And I would argue that it’s not the even-handed abortion debate it’s been billed as, either. When one of the parties is a pregnant young woman handcuffed to a bed by kidnappers who are determined she give birth against her will to a baby born of rape, it couldn’t be a more vivid visual metaphor for the forces lined up against a woman’s right to choose.
But no matter. It boasts two intensely involving, fully realized performances by K.D. O’Hair and Dawn Truax, with good supporting work by Ryan Bernier and Pete Clapsis, a plain but meticulously detailed set and lighting by Jeannine Borzello and Matt Beil, and insightful direction by Sabarsky.
The setup seems almost homey at first: a doting-auntie type, Du (Truax), is setting up a basement room as if to make everything as nice as possible for a visitor. But the guest, it turns out, is not a willing one: Du’s superior, Walter (Clapsis), carries in an unconscious Keely (O’Hair) and cuffs her to the bedpost.
As Keely gradually gains consciousness and becomes aware of her entrapment, O’Hair is never less than compelling, her huge eyes conveying her disbelief and growing hysteria, even if the script seems to make her maintain that hysteria for a loooong time. But as months pass and the relationship grows between her and Du, both actors find layers of complexity in their characters that do indeed lead them, if not to each other’s positions re: abortion, then to a rapprochement through which they can see each other more clearly.
There’s a lovely extended scene in which Du brings Keely a pretty dress to wear instead of the nightgown she’s been living in, uncuffs her and gives her a hair treatment as Keely relishes a clandestine beer. O’Hair, having been confined to bed-acting for so long, now gets a chance to move, and it’s exhilarating — Keely is no angel, we discover, but she’s alive and funny and a bit anarchic — and Truax gives a master class in listening that comes to a head when Keely relives in harrowing detail the rape that led to her pregnancy. The next morning, when Walter discovers their joint transgression and gives a lecture that’s even more pompous and pious than usual, even Du can’t help but chuckle. “He is with God,” she says to Keely after Walter leaves, “but he’s insufferable.”
I wondered at times if perhaps Clapsis’s performance was too pompous and pious; though his rageful outbursts are believably and scarily explosive, he otherwise makes this self-righteous Christian such a comic figure that it’s almost too easy to dismiss his horrific positions as empty cant, rather than see them as potentially convincing (if dangerous).
But when Walter offers a warped defense of the “family” he is forcing into existence, Clapsis is finally quite chilling. And Bernier is perfectly cast. Always a likable actor, in this instance he convincingly suggests the potential danger beneath the charm; not to spoil too much, but when his character is brought back by Walter for an unholy reunion with Keely, the confrontation and the actions that follow are truly shocking.
But Martin doesn’t leave us there. In a final coda, we see the humanity of both Keely and Du, the flaws as well as the will to endure and defend. But no answers are, or can be, given.
This one will stay with you. And with any luck, K.D. O'Hair and Dawn Truax will get many more chances to shine on area stages.
