Review - In Paradise/ She Plundered Him & Tales of an Urban Indian

I don't know how far along set and lighting designer Maruti Evans was with his work for INTAR's double bill of Eduardo Machado's In Paradise and Nick Norman's She Plundered Him when the company lost its home due to the sudden closing of the Zipper Theatre and its season was rescued by the availability of the much smaller studio space at the Cherry Lane Theatre, but I imagine the switch necessitated some drastic changes in his view of the two pieces. In any case, the end result is perhaps the most memorable and effective part of the evening.

With two opposite sides of the black box space seating only two rows of audience each, Evans uses minimal lighting and has the floor, walls and even the ceiling paneled with a dark reflective surface. Surrounding the characters with mirrors plays up the self-centeredness shared by those who populate both one-acts and also gives the audience interesting angles with which to watch the action simultaneously.

Machado, who is also INTAR's artistic director, sets In Paradise in the Pasadena living room of Marilyn (Leslie Lyles), a 60-year-old women who, when she was 36, began an affair with 16-year-old Carlos (Ed Vassallo), the lad whose therapy sessions came immediately after hers. They married a few years later but as the play begins it's been seven years since he finished one of their lovemaking sessions by saying, "I need to go. I'm homosexual." Now Carlos sits quietly in Marilyn's home, wanting reconciliation after the man he left her for has left him for a woman.

While Lyles, who does the great majority of the talking in this one, has an attention-grabbing presence, the play is primarily her character's recap of their history in expository speeches like, "You want to sell yourself short playing Broadway shows when you are a jazz pianist?" While tensions fly a bit in director Billy Hopkins' mounting - which is primarily Lyles taking the stage while Vassallo sits still - the piece goes nowhere.

She Plundered Him is the first professionally produced play by Nick Norman, who studied with Machado at Columbia. Set in present day Britain, the piece seems to be an attempt to spoof sexually charged highbrow comedy of manners. The characters speak with exaggerated elegantly formal accents which are dropped for the occasional vulgarity. (While the f-word is frequently used in Machado's play, Norman seems to prefer dropping the c-bomb.) The plot concerns the mentally unstable Calder (Mark Elliot Wilson), who believes his wife Keep (Lyles) is having an affair with their son Anthony (James Chen). Hopkins never establishes a firm tone for this one, which is understandable because I'm not sure the author has either, and the piece just trudges along to its finish.

Photos by Carol Rosegg: Top: Leslie Lyles and Ed Vassallo; Bottom: Leslie Lyles, James Chen and Mark Elliot Wilson

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"I like concrete! I get lost when I'm in the woods," says playwright/author Darrell Dennis of the Shuswap nation at the top of Tales of An Urban Indian. "I can't shape shift. I've never had a vision. Never heard an owl call my name. And I've never cried when I saw someone litter."

Presented as part of the Public Theater's LAB season (with all tickets priced at only $10) the Canadian playwright's solo piece is a promising and entertaining work in progress that follows the basic one-person-play pattern of telling a coming of age story involving family, identity, self-discovery and the opportunity to play lots of different characters.

But this one is only semi-autobiographical, as the author appears as Simon Douglas, a young man of Native North American heritage whose first two decades have been divided between Coyote Lake Reservation Number Four (a place his mother is determined to leave because she believes the only future for her son on "The Rez" is alcoholism) and the streets of East Vancouver.

Growing up in a world where it's believed that racism makes ambition useless, a young man's life on the reserve, as described by Simon, generally consists of getting drunk and trying to get laid. The former is the cause of a tragic accident; the latter, just humiliation. His determination to not be mistaken for gay by his buddies contributes to another tragedy involving his best friend.

Trying to gain acceptance (and the attention of pretty white girls) by being the class clown, he's punished for his antics by being made to attend drama class. There he finally discovers something positive to do with his life, especially when the movie Dances With Wolves suddenly increases the demand for Native actors.

But at age 15, when mom moves them out of the reserve and to East Vancouver, Simon escapes the loneliness of being the only Native in his school by enjoying the camaraderie of Hastings Street, a haven for strip clubs, welfare hotels and bars that allow underage drinking.

Directed by Herbie Banks (of the Ojibway nation), Dennis gives off a very likeable energetic vibe when telling Simon's tale, as the staging takes advantage of the young actor's athleticism. His story-telling prowess leans on the side of stand-up comedy, with a healthy number of zingers landing. But the shift from riffs on his urban outlook on Native culture to more sobering moments where his heritage provides comfort and dignity are sometimes a bit awkward.

There's a bit of fatty material in the 90-minute piece, particularly an odd song-and-dance moment by the minister who baptized him. But when Dennis hits his targets, like in a very funny scene where he plays off stereotypes of his race to gain respect in high school ("Teacher, it saddens me in my heart that I have not completed my homework... My animal spirit guide had feasted upon my book report."), Tales of An Urban Indian makes for some warm, amusing and sometimes moving theatre.