A Body of Water is an extremely odd play, one that promises, for most of its two acts, to deliver some powerful truths on the subjects of reality, memory, dementia and/or crime, but ends by proving itself little more than a drawn-out anecdote. In the excellent co-production by Stageworks and Gorilla Theatre, author Lee Blessing’s night of mind games is treated with all possible seriousness, but we nonetheless leave the theater regretting that so many surprises and hairpin turns have added up to so little.
I admit that the play is riveting until the end — so much is mysterious, so much needs to be learned — that you wait anxiously for every meager clue and large revelation. But then, in its last moments, the Pirandellian complexities collapse into a mildly interesting observation about mean-spirited relations. And it’s hard not to feel unsatisfied.
The play begins with a middle-aged man and a woman in bathrobes, sitting comfortably in an attractive living room, trying to figure out who they are and how they got there. They don’t know their own names, they’re not sure if they’re married, and they don’t even know if the house they’re in is their own. Her only memory is from her college days: She was breaking up with a boyfriend. He remembers less than that. The try various methods of restarting their self-awareness and fail.
And then a young woman in a red sweatshirt and running pants enters the room, apparently angry with the two amnesiacs and fully aware of their identities. She offers them evidence: his wallet and her purse. They learn their names — Moss and Avis — and their marital status. They discover that this young woman, Wren, has been trying for weeks to get them to remember themselves. It seems they’re in the middle of a melodramatic murder case, and that most interested observers believe that they’re culpable in a terrible way. This description of reality is dreadfully hard on the couple — the woman particularly is devastated — but the more Wren insists on the bleak details of their situation, the more an irrepressible skepticism rises up through the horror. What if Wren is lying? Why does she show them certain photos from their past while claiming that certain others — exceedingly important ones — have disappeared? What if someone is taking advantage of their confusion?
Since the play’s effectiveness depends on the answers to such mysteries, I’ll divulge no more of the plot. But I will say that there are lots of twists and turns to come, and that the truth turns out to be a very hard thing to pin down. What’s constant in the play, what survives the churning kaleidoscope of truth and fiction, is the anguish of the older couple and the barely-disguised viciousness of their young friend. And the three actors in this puzzle mostly play these stances with superb persuasiveness.
Barbara Eaker as Wren is a coldly beautiful antagonist, the one hope that the older couple will ever discover their true condition, but so haughty and impatient that they can’t rely on her for more than momentary confirmations. Jim Wicker is just about perfect as decent, logical Moss, a man whose sex drive is intact even if his mind is not, and who’s quick to comfort Avis when the force of circumstance — or of apparent circumstance — becomes too much for her. Monica Merryman as Avis is the very picture of a strong woman who’s nevertheless subject to fits of despair; still, she doesn’t quite make us believe in her tears.
Director Anna Brennen stages the show for optimum emotional honesty, and Tandy Ecenia’s beautiful set, mostly in blue and white, and backed by an enormous abstract fabric suggesting sky and clouds, is one of the most attractive ever to grace the Gorilla stage. Gerri Louise Gates’ costumes, from Moss and Avis’ matching khaki trousers once they get dressed, to Wren’s running outfit, are quietly emblematic. Karla Hartley’s lighting is unobtrusively impeccable.
But the play finally feels as if author Blessing began it with little to say, reached for some big effects, and then finished it with little more inspiration than when he began. Whether it’s Pirandello’s Henri IV or the Matrix films, I’m always ready to enjoy an artistic excursion on the fiction/reality dichotomy. But even though it starts promisingly, A Body of Water ends in disappointment. It seems there’s little more going on here than smoke — and the usual mirrors.
This article appears in Feb 18-24, 2009.
