The Nature of Fear and Its Effects, Jobsite Theater's evening of original short plays on the subjects of horror and suspense, is an unbalanced conglomeration of silly and provocative scripts, juvenile and mature acting, and precise and sloppy directing. It's presided over by a "professor" who lectures, with ever-increasing irrelevancy, on the subject of fear, and when it wants to be funny, it's most often simply foolish. Yes, it has its peaks — especially in Act II — but the overall effect is one of haphazardness and disproportion. Someone at Jobsite must have very good and very bad taste at the same time. How else to explain this Monster Mishmash? The Nature of Fear, currently showing at the Shimberg Playhouse of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center (I saw a preview), begins with a lecture by actor Shawn Paonessa in the role of Professor Templeton Q. Westlake. Paonessa's a fine performer, but it's not long after Professor Westlakes's first words that we realize he has little insight on fear (or any subject) and that his only real use will be to introduce the evening's sketches.
As for those sketches, the best of them is called Breathing Oblivion by Paonessa and Neil Gobioff, about renegade angel Jude (formidably played by Mark Trent) who's unlawfully killing humans before their time. This long one-act isn't wholly coherent — Jude's motivations are complicated and confusing, and the amnesia he gives to survivors doesn't always make sense — but in the arguments Jude has with heavenly colleague Gabriel (nicely performed by Ami Sallee Corley) we find echoes of the ancient controversy: whether it's better to live and suffer or never to have lived at all. Even with some unevenness, this is a serious work on a philosophical subject, and worthy of our time.
Only two of the other short one-acts are nearly as successful. Matt Creager's Dancer is about a man named Mills (the excellent Matt Lundsford) who remembers aloud his nights in a strip club, and his fascination with one dancer in particular. As he speaks, the mentally resurrected Christen Pettit undulates behind him — all leading to a surprise that suddenly transforms our estimation both of Mills and of his memory. C.H.D. McBride's Graveyard Shift with Clive is basically a blackout sketch, a couple of minutes or so in length, but it features a genuinely funny look at an undertaker (Leah LoSchiavo) whose vocation leaves no room for superfluities, not even for the living dead. This one's just a joke, but it's worth a (brief) laugh.
The remaining plays are problematic. Michael Olsen's Casa Diablo, skillfully acted by Corley and Shannon Armstrong, is an inconclusive look at a newcomer in hell who may or may not be guilty of the sin he's being tortured for. The trouble is, once the positions of the torturer and torturee are stated, there's virtually no development of plot or character. Steve Patterson's The Body is about a doctor named Austin (unconvincingly played by Armstrong) who mainly spends time performing autopsies and mourning his departed wife. When a female corpse (Maureen Renihan) appears to speak to him, Austin is suitably stunned, and we're supposed to wonder, "Is she alive or is he hallucinating?" In fact, what we're really doing is remembering old Vincent Price movies wherein this circumstance was better portrayed.
Finally, Warner Conarton's A Touch of Sun, about a vampire in a hospital room, is so sloppily directed and acted (with the occasional exception of Jason Evans' blond bloodsucker), all its potential for humor is lost. And I still can't figure out why the patient (LoSchiavo again) has a Transylvanian accent.
That's the long and short of it. Chris Holcom's staging is alternately messy and sharp; Brian Smallheer's set hardly exists (though there's a well-done coffin among other props) and Joy Platt's costumes are competent if only occasionally outstanding. In fact, the whole evening's like that: disappointing for many minutes, then surprisingly stimulating, legitimately comic for a few moments, then merely ridiculous. And never frightening.
The Nature of Fear: Erratic. Inconsistent.
What this show needs is quality control.
Playing God David Davalos' Darkfall, currently playing at American Stage, is so full of affronts to Western theology it's hard just to sit back and enjoy the production's fine acting. Davalos would have us believe that God, in the person of an elderly landlord named Eli Potter, might fall down while climbing stairs, and then have a stroke and lose his eyesight, and that Potter's will would leave the future business of salvation to the Devil — if "missing in action," Jesus doesn't show up to make his own claim. Jesus, currently a junior high school social studies teacher, might prefer taking roll in homeroom to redeeming souls out in the messy Real World.
Add to this a savvy capitalist Devil who's portrayed as practically spotless since that all-too-misunderstood rebellion against God so many centuries ago, and the result is one of the oddest religious dramas since A Man for No Seasons or T.S. Eliot's Peccadillo in the Cathedral.
But then there's that fine acting, almost taking our minds off the script's central heresies. Brian Shea is typically splendid as a mild-mannered Jesus who left the universal stage because "I needed some time to myself," and author Davalos is outstanding as a Lucifer whose greatest sin is his penchant for Armani socks. Then there are the three archangels Mike, Rae and Gabby (for Michael, Raphael and Gabriel) each played capably by Steven Ivester, Bonnie Agan and Stacy Pendergraft. The young couple Sayza and Ike, nicely rendered by Desi Doyen and Jon Van Middlesworth, have a pivotal role in Davalos' bizarre plot.
This is a terrific cast, and one utterly on top of Darkfall's often clever, demanding dialogue (which occasionally turns into verse). Scott Cooper and Kenneth Noel Mitchell's modern set is attractively urban, and Amy J. Cianci's costumes, from Jesus' corduroy trousers to Lucifer's tuxedo, are witty and resonant. Joseph P. Oshry's lighting is, as usual, first-class.
Nevertheless, this wannabe philosophical play poses a real digression from serious thinking. Problems of Good and Evil — in history, in the street — are just finessed in Darkfall's arguments between a harmless Devil and an apathetic Jesus. If there are enigmas in Western religion, they can hardly be solved by a redefinition of all terms.
But that's what playwright Davalos attempts.
And as a result, Darkfall, even when its writing is at its best, comes across as fundamentally irrelevant.
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 5, 2001.
