Bethany
Runs through Feb. 8 at Silver Meteor Gallery, 2213 E. Sixth Ave., Ybor City, Tampa, tamparep.org/Bethany, 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, $15
Rating: two-and-a-half out of five stars
Money – or the need for it – is the quintessential subject of modern American drama. You’re not so sure? Well, look at three of the most celebrated plays of the twentieth century. A Streetcar Named Desire is about the impoverished Blanche DuBois who, having lost all her sources of income, has no choice but to move in with her sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley. Death of a Salesman is about the financially-challenged Willy Loman, whose money difficulties and disappointments finally lead him to suicide – in order that his son Biff might inherit the life insurance payment. And, speaking of insurance, A Raisin in the Sun is about a struggling African-American family whose one hope of escaping their claustrophobic living quarters in the ghetto is a 10,000-dollar insurance check. Again and again (see also Glass Menagerie, Glengarry Glen Ross and Rent), the American playwright returns to that tantalizing pot of gold at the end of the national rainbow. Didn’t the Declaration of Independence promise it to us? How else did Thomas Jefferson imagine us pursuing happiness?
Laura Marks’ Bethany, currently playing in a middling production at Ybor City’s Silver Meteor Gallery, isn’t anywhere near being a great play, but its best feature is its candid reading of the American check register. In the world of this drama (presented by TRT2), just about everyone is broke or near the breaking point, and the joke is that the much-yearned-for source of relief is also nearly bankrupt. Consider Crystal, the plays’ heroine (played, with emotions and gestures too big for this small space, by Nicole Jeannine Smith): she’s lost her husband and her house, has been living in her car, and has just seen her five-year-old daughter taken away by the government on the grounds that the girl’s mother can’t support her. When the play begins, Crystal has found a repossessed house to squat in, and is gambling that she can convince a pretty sharp social worker that this two-story edifice is her regular domicile. But even masquerades run on cash, so Crystal is depending on her commissions-only job at an embattled Saturn dealership to make her deception a success.
That success — if it’s to materialize — depends on Charlie, a motivational speaker (played with a dour snarkiness by Greg Thompson) who may or may not be in the market for one of the vehicles Crystal sells. Problem is, Charlie is more notably on the hunt for Crystal’s own chassis, and he may hold back on the car purchase unless the saleswoman comes with it. While this plotline unfolds, Charlie treats us to bits and pieces of the harangues he aims at the would-be wealthy. These are incitements to visualize the endless toys money can bring, to see that yacht in one’s mind’s eye and declare not “I want this” but “This is mine.” Charlie’s nemesis is Gary (the sloppily credible Max Janeda), another squatter who shares the foreclosed house with Crystal, and who gradually comes to feel that he has a romantic claim on his housemate.
The writing of Gary's part is one of the reasons the play doesn’t quite work: he’s mostly there for laughs and to obstruct Crystal’s schemes, especially insofar as Charlie is concerned. But two other characters — social worker Toni (played sturdily by Isabel Natera), and Crystal’s boss Shannon (neatly supercilious Emily Belvo) add some variety to the mix, even though they don’t get much stage time. The remaining character is Patricia (the affecting Caroline Jett), a woman who knows things about Charlie that Crystal, all too importantly, doesn’t. Will Crystal ever rise out of destitution (actually or apparently), and thus be reunited with her eponymous daughter? What will she have to sacrifice in the process?
If this question doesn’t exactly glue us to our seats, it’s because author Marks has little to add after we first meet her main characters. Some welcome revelations about Crystal’s deceptiveness come too late in the game, and though it’s a relief to eventually learn some previously withheld truths about sexually aggressive Charlie, they hardly vindicate our patience. Still, Dan Granke’s staging is tolerable, if a little messy, and Ryan Finzelbar’s set, made up of abstract wooden constructs on a checkerboard floor, is reasonably attractive. I wish the play had more to say about our economic condition than the mere fact that we live and breathe it, but maybe I want too much. Bethany is about money, and so, in this society, is just about everything else. It doesn’t hurt to be reminded that our malaise isn’t strictly personal.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2015.