NO EXIT: Afterthoughts

                It's an experience very few of us will ever know...luckily, thankfully. Though if one follows the news regularly, it might seem that the odds are greatly increasing.

                The incidence of individuals arriving on school college campuses, possessed by self-loathing, armed with hatred and automatic weapons, may or may not be on the rise, but it does happen.  Columbine, Virginia Tech, these and similar real-life tales of horror are told via the cover of TIME or at your local Cineplex, courtesy of Michael Moore.

                We are shocked, intrigued, obsessed with the question of "Why?" But we take comfort from the distance; we are safe. This didn't...wouldn't...happen to us. But what if it did?

                When Sheila Toomb's character, Alison, in Alec Lawson's brief, one-act play, "Afterthoughts," is asked about her mother's death, she says, "Was it sudden? Isn't it always sudden?" The point is clear. No manner of preparation or forewarning can ready one's self for such tragedy, for death.

                The stage for Lawson's play is simple, Spartan, minimalist--broken bits of grayish-white drop ceiling lay scattered on the floor, a few wooden boxes painted black (everything is black).  The play begins with lights down, the sounds of a college cafeteria or other gathering place fills the room. There's the tell-tale "pop...pop-pop-pop" of gunfire immediately followed by screams and general pandemonium. When the lights come up there are three bodies on stage. Are they alive? Dead?

                Courtney Williams (Mary) and and Cordelia Snow (Michelle) serve as the "Greek chorus" to the play. Stationed in a small alcove atop the ceiling, they are separate from the stage action, but clearly connected to it as each gives their perspective on a horror "you think happens only to someone else, not to you."

                As though from a thick yet disturbed sleep, Alison awakens first, then is joined by Will (Dan Walker), the latter a theater major, the former, a student of art history (the characters' exchange as each denigrates the other's field of study--theater: you stand on a stage, say some words, go home; art: you stare at paintings--provided the play's sole moment of comic relief).

                Studying the walls, closely examining her surroundings, Alison is calm, pragmatic, level-headed. Walker's Will is emotional, overwhelmed by the circumstances as it appears initially that he has landed in a revival of Sartre's NO EXIT. They speak of windows, but we see only black walls. There's a single door, but it will not open. And there's still the matter of James (Michael Geib), who for the first 20 minutes of the play lies motionless on the floor.

                Lawson, who is a recent graduate of Loyola College in Maryland and the National Theater Institute, has written a play that is about a great many things--how we perceive each other, our society's current obsession with self-appreciation and notoriety, the contradictory nature of humans, capable of blind destruction and yet infinite compassion. When Geib's James, in a stolid monotone, speaks of humans as nothing but statistics and the pain of life's injustices, real or imagined, Alison remarks how her mother, at her passing, had no recollection of past pains, "only the love."

                Despite the youth of the cast (all are either still in college or recent graduates), the performances are that of veteran actors--measured, textured, and riveting. Despite Allison's stereotypical  thoughts on the subject, theater is much more than "people saying words," as these actors bring a burgeoning playwright's vision to life in a thought-provoking, sometimes unsettling, but always entertaining manner.

                The Strand bills itself as "theater from a different perspective," and in "Afterthoughts," it certainly delivers.

                "Afterthoughts" continues its run at The Strand, 1823 N. Charles Street, now through July 11^th. For tickets and more information, call 443-874-4917 or visit www.strandtheatercompany.org.

 

 

 

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