'SMOLDER' at the Strand: Love Burns

By Dan Collins

"Let no one who loves be called unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow."-- James Matthew Barrie

Or if not a rainbow, perhaps an arc of electricity.  For sparks are at the core of local playwright Julie Lewis' SMOLDER, now at The Strand Theater in downtown Baltimore.

Reno (Todd Krickler) feels the energy from his tenant, Sylvia (Megan Therese Rippey), a publicist for top rock bands, a confident, beautiful woman with the ability to "swear like Stanley Kowalksi" while ordering about her aide, Ginnie (Kerra Holtgren). He is smitten and the fact that Sylvia already has a boyfriend, Richard (John D'Amato), is a minor inconvenience to Reno's plans.

Reno soon becomes a fixture in Sylvia's apartment, stopping by to fix a sink or repair a door frame as something always seems to be falling apart (and does so, literally, when a photo of Sylvia crashed to the floor...though this writer suspects that was truly an accident, but worked well, metaphorically, in the play).

It's Rule Number One for those afflicted with Unrequited Love:  make yourself indispensable and your love's object will never send you packing. Of course, there's another saying-be careful what you wish for, you're liable to get it. When Sylvia suffers a disfiguring accident which robs her of her beauty, she soon loses her lust for life as well as her sanity.  Sylvia is Reno's for the taking, but does he still want her?

As Ms. Lewis states in her playwright's notes, SMOLDER examines the nature of love unfulifilled--is it really love at all, or merely a form of obsession? If the object of your desire changes, might your feelings change as well?

SMOLDER is an extremely clever play; it follows a nonlinear path, beginning with Reno and Sylvia-post-accident, then jumps back and forth in time, but always within Sylvia's apartment. Lewis juxtaposes  "Sylvia I," played by the tall, redheaded Ms. Rippey in full "Mistress of the Universe" mode, while "Sylvia II" is portrayed by Alex Hewett, a diminutive blonde swathed in bandages, black head scarves and sunglasses a la recluse Greta Garbo.  The casting is inspired, as though the once fiery, Amazon-like Sylvia has, due to her misfortune, been beaten down, her flame extinguished.

Sometimes both actresses are on stage, Sylvia II on her hands and knees cutting out pictures from magazines while Sylvia I and Reno share a moment from an earlier time-it is as though Sylvia II is remembering her past and we the audience can see her memories. I also noted that as each actress stayed in character at the end of each scene-- ylvia II slinks from the stage, shuffling off like the pained invalid she has become-thus keeping the audience transfixed in the artificial reality of the play.

One of the play's finer moments comes when Reno relives the moment he first admitted to Sylvia that he was in love with her, as Sylvia II begins to acknowledge her own feelings for him. With both Sylvias on stage, Reno toggles back and forth between the two moments, the dialogue melding between past and present as Sylvia and Reno reverse roles between the one who loves and one who does not.

Ultimately, Ms. Lewis' play is about a great many things-not merely unrequited love, but true love, as Richard, ring in hand, proposes to Sylvia II on bended knee.  But would such a marriage endure? When Richard speaks it is almost always about Sylvia's physical beauty. Does the ring represent love or a consolation prize? It's a play about friendship. Ginnie makes an impassioned plea to save Sylvia II from her madness which has turned her apartment into a giant scrapbook. But in the next moment, she's off brokering high-powered deals Sylvia herself once made, as Ginnie the student has now displaced the master-Sylvia III perhaps? It's about class and social status-can an apartment superintendent be in the same league as the woman who hobnobs with Bon Jovi? And it a play about betrayal-a lover scorned, a friendship forgotten, a trust abused.  Lewis brings us full circle by play's end, quite literally, a gift dramatis nicely tied together in just under 75 minutes.

Didactic plays that are also entertaining are a rarity, and the cast does a fine job in bringing this smart tale of love-whatever form it may take-to the Strand.

SMOLDER continues its run at The Strand, 1823 North Charles Street, now through April 26^th, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets available for purchase online, www.strandtheatercompany.org, or by calling 443-874-4917. Tickets are $15, $1 online surcharge applies;  students, seniors and BROKE, $10 (enter in promotional code BROKE during web purchase to receive the discount. 

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