BPF: "A Touch of Spring": Marriage of Clichés

◊ 1/2 out of five.

The blurb about A Touch of Spring offered in the BPF literature, "After a lifetime of love and tragedies, Mary is going to find that true love can last even after death. That is...if she can regain her sanity," sounds intriguing enough, though the most interesting part of it, the last sentence, really points up one of the biggest problems with this work - the interesting part of the play is tacked on to the end, like an after-thought (or maybe because an ending was eluding the playwright).  It also, in hind sight, hints at the Lifetime movie style cliches that cripple this "it-means-so-much" melodrama. It is very telling about the quality of a play when members of the audience can recite, with the actors, the last line of the play.  In the case of A Touch of Spring, which opened the 26^th Annual Baltimore Playwrights Festival at Fells Point Corner Theatre last weekend, the recitation is only one of many problems with the script, penned by Ben Logan. That last line, saying the title of the play, was the last of a vast array of cliches that mar this potentially decent play.   

Chief among the problems with this piece is the fact that it is a relationship play, where the characters, save for an opening embrace and the closing minutes of the play, have no opportunity to interact.  Mr. Logan seems to have forgotten that plays should show, not tell.  All of act one, and most of act two, is a series of monologues, which, tennis-like, go back and forth between Mary (Jaye Nicole) and Mike (Grant Chism).  This would be an interesting structure to start things off and maybe intermittently, but a whole play?  Not so much.  It doesn't help that almost all of act one has Mary telling us her version of events - meeting Mike, falling for Mike, getting pregnant by Mike, marrying Mike, etc. - followed immediately by a Mike's unbelievably similar take on the same events.  Each one a Hallmark card of sentiment without the brevity, they throw around statements like "I knew he was the one the minute we started talking."  "My parents were so disappointed that I was pregnant."  "My parents said they didn't raise me to be that kind of man."  "Looking at little MJ was like looking at Mike."  It should also be pointed out that, typical male Mike talks a few times about his "johnson" and how he uses it, so parents beware.

 Eventually, I guess, Mr. Logan realized he needed to throw in a plot twist or two.  One is as predictable as sunrise/sunset, especially when we are warned at the intermission curtain that life doesn't prepare you for tragedy.  The other is so out of character for Mary that when Mike tells us about it, not one but two audience members called out, "Oh, no she didn't!" followed by an undercurrent of laughter.  (I will reveal neither plot twist, though you can probably figure them out.) 

The final scene, the part about Mary's sanity, is yet another timeless plot cliche - she can see and talk to dead people - that is until her "attendant" (Carolyn Marcus) comes to get her.  In that scene, Mike and Mary actually talk to one another, and hint at the beautiful thing they had together pre- and post-tragedy.  Please understand, I am not making any kind of fun about any of the events of the play; Heaven forbid any parent should be faced with the harsh reality of this particular tragedy.  It is the execution of these events that is, well, uninteresting and amateurishly played out. 

GorDon Parks, the director, has done pretty much all he can given the constraints of the script format, though the rhythm of the monologues, back and forth, back and forth, is seriously undermined by the maddening length of time between lights down and lights up.  His choice of "music of the moment" is also an eye-rolling series of cliches, fostering not one, but two audience sing alongs.  "Going to the Chapel", "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?" and, you guessed it, "The Way We Were" were all there!  Parks and Ben MacKrell have created a nicely symbolic set for the play, making one wish even more that some effort had been put into some symbolism or theme in the play itself. 

Ms. Marcus, a cutie, does what she can with her seven or eight lines, but really should be mindful of not checking out whether or not the audience is checking her out.  After two hours with the same two boring people, we are checking her out like a hungry wolves staring at a wounded deer.  Grant Chism, so terrific in The Boys Next Door last year, is stiff as a board and bland as oatmeal here.  It is pretty apparent that, at least on opening night, he doesn't have the firmest grasp on his lines, though he looks uncomfortable beyond that.  Some serious direction about how to move the body (the arms in particular) during a lengthy monologue would have served this actor well.  Jaye Nicole, as Mary, is the only reason to see this play.  She rises above every banal cliche and every melodramatic moment.  Her delivery is spot on, and she immediately connects with the audience by sheer force of her magnetic presence.  Her excellent use of pauses, laughs and stutters make what she is saying fresh and real - like she is sharing memories, which she is.  She is also a master at the slight facial expression - she says more with the c*ckof her chin or the wink of her eye than any ten lines written for her. 

Included in the program is an extensive biography of playwright Ben Logan.  While I pray that what has happened in his play never really happened to him, he might look into the description of his childhood in that biography for inspiration for his next play.  That biography is infinitely more interesting than what is on the stage at FPCT.

PHOTO: Grant Chism, Carolyn Marcus and Jaye Nicole in A Touch of Spring.  Photo by Amy Jones.

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