"Off the Map": Off in Too Many Directions at FPCT

SHOW INFORMATION:  Off the Map plays through February 17; Fri and Sat at 8PM, Sun at 2PM.  Tickets are $17.00.  BWW readers get a $2.00 discount per ticket.  Bring this article to the Box Office to get your discount.  For more information, call 410-276-7837 or go to www.fpct.org. 

◊◊ 1/2 out of five.   1 hour, 50 minutes, including intermission.  Adult themes.

 

Despite the fine cast, who works diligently through the entire production, Off the Map, which opened last weekend at Fells Point Corner Theatre, is a pretty messy and very depressing work.  Most of the problems with this play are the problems of the playwright, Joan Ackermann.  I'm sure reading the script, it seemed so smart, so meaningful, so dramatic.  But live, up and walking around it is too much.  Too much in every way.  Off the Map is one of those plays that tries to be so many things that none of them fully work, and is yet another play where it seems the author has put every Play Writing 101 trick she learned into one script.  The result is a tedious first act, a rarely changing mood of melancholy, and enough heavy handed symbolism and didactic speech for any three plays. 

Though the script bears the majority of the fault here, director Barry Feinstein shares some of the blame as well.  Mr. Feinstein, a reputable local director, who rarely has this simple a problem – poor pacing - in one of his plays, I am almost embarrassed to mention it.  I may not have always agreed with some his staging, but pacing has never been an issue.  The first act comes in at just under an hour, but easily feels that and half again.  I, and other members of the audience around me, were audibly surprised that only an hour had passed when the intermission lights came up.  Ackermann's script is made up of several scenes of varying length, but with seldom varying tone, so it sort of drones on and on.  Mr. Feinstein doesn't help it by trying to make it flow with scene changes in front of us while the narrator speaks to us.  In this case it is distracting – not that she is saying anything particularly pertinent or that we haven't already gleaned for ourselves.  Oddly, I am generally a fan of keeping the momentum going with seamless, cinematic progressions from scene to scene, but here, a quiet, sit-and-ponder-what-you've-just-seen moment or two might have helped us to clear our heads.  Act two, at just 36 minutes, flies by, relatively. 

Not that all of the staging is bad, not at all.  On Fells Point's tiny stage, set designer Darla Luke has fancied a clever home for these odd characters that totally keeps in mind everything the script tells us.  But the script also calls for outdoor scenes – an outhouse and I'm guessing a front porch, as well as a fishing pond – and a few well chosen props and a convincing outhouse on the far sides of the stage do the trick.  Lighting designer Charles Danforth III does what he can to transition us from the house to the "outside", and Feinstein has worked well with his cast to make sure they affect the postures and facial expressions of being outside in the New Mexico desert.

The story line is relatively simple.  A small family – a wife, a Vietnam vet husband, and a precocious home schooled little girl live off the land in New Mexico, scavenging for everything they own from the local dump ("It's amazing what people throw away these days," the mother says.  Profound.), and eating what they can hunt ("Never kill what you can't eat," she says.  How "green.").  The mother spends her days running errands to the library, killing and skinning animals and tending garden totally naked – a major plot point, though unseen.  The little girl longs to get out, of course, and talks with the wizened tongue of an old woman, of course.  And she spends her days talking to the adult male friends of her parents and writing fraudulent letters to Nabisco in order to get boxes for free samples, and to American Express for a credit card based on information stolen from one of her men friends who never questions why she wants his checking account number and Social Security card.  She's that cute.  Identity theft comes to the prairie.  And the father spends his days roaming the house in a deep depression, crying and telling everyone he's depressed.  Somehow, they eek out a happy existence, until the IRS shows up wanting its share of nothing.  Seems Uncle Sam is unhappy that they haven't filed in years.  But the problems get worse.  The IRS man has been stung by several bees while gawking at mom doing naked gardening.  Does he collect the $1,200.00 they owe?  Does he get cured from his bee poisoning?  Will someone stop the child from buying everything under the sun with a Platinum American Express?  Will dad snap out of it?  Will mom put on some clothes?  Intriguing.

But, by and large, the acting is quite good, all things considered.  George, the dad's best friend, and the girl's surrogate father, is played amiably and very low key by Michael O'Connell.  He has a genuine smile and offers pretty much the only real kindness in the play.  His rapport with his child co-star is nice to see and very real.  Alex Hewitt, with a lovely smile and troubled eyes, narrates the piece as the adult version of the little girl.  The actress, who does a fine job throughout should be separated from the work, which has her observing, ghost-like and commenting to us.  Why?  Well, it is a cool device you can use when writing a play.

Michael Zemarel, as William Gibbs, does excellent work here, and truth be told, he has the most to work with.  He is businesslike as the tax man, and very convincing as a man brought to the brink of death by stings which he is clearly allergic to, as are his chills in fever.  What is particularly nice about his portrayal is that instead of going for seedy, leering pervert, he gives Gibbs a palpable sense of awe as he remembers over and over coming upon the mother in the altogether.  And like Mr. O'Connell, he has a wonderful rapport with the child.

As the parents, Laura Gifford and Richard Cutting have the most stage time and least to work with.  Ms. Gifford, clad in jeans, a flannel shirt and clogs fairly defines 60's mother earth.    She gets to parcel out such fortune cookie wisdom as "Change is a way of clearing space for something new" and " The better you are at letting things go, the freer your hand will be to catch something new" – the latter so profound that they use it as a tag line on the show poster in the lobby.  And of her husband, she tells us, "Bright light makes the shadows in him even darker."  That Ms. Gifford can say these profundities with such convincing sincerity is a credit to what a talented woman she must be.  Her slow cadence when delivering lines gets a bit tedious, though.  But considering what she is forced to say, who can blame her?

Mr. Cutting, a brave man who wanders the set often in just his briefs and combat boots, says almost nothing during act one, and has to find nuance and variety in a role that screams one-note performance.  But, succeed he does, mining the role for every speck of darkness, gut-wrenching sadness and a dash of fear that he might not escape depression's grasp.  And even through all of that non-speaking and sulking, you still see glimpses of the man who loves his family.  Not bad work, Mr. Cutting.

The centerpiece of this enterprise is, of course, the little girl, Bo, played sweetly by Miss Rachel Condliffe, a pale, frail, wisp of a thing with soulful eyes that betray a worldly wisdom and girlish silliness all at once.  And she plays bright very well, with what seems to be a genuine understanding of all of the smart adult things she has to say.  But what makes Miss Condliffe really endearing is that while her character is clearly precocious, she is clearly not – at least not in that annoying I'm-a-child-actor way.  If she really were, each line would come out perfectly timed (like a sitcom) and she'd work the audience in an obvious way.  Instead, she (and I'll assume Mr. Feinstein had his hand in this) works hard to be a regular kid that we can love for her smartness AND for her sweet innocence.  There is a scene where she is outside playing animal tamer with a hula-hoop, and she will melt your heart.

I'd go to Off the Map for the acting, to be sure.  But the play itself leaves so much to be desired.  Ackermann has thrown in everything but the kitchen sink – poverty, self-sacrifice, coming of age themes, change is good themes, words of wisdom, and several obvious and heavy-handed symbols (a coyote, also a scavenger, watches over the place until he is killed unnecessarily, burial prayer to come), and the tired device of a narrator from the future.  If any of this went anywhere, it might be much more interesting.  If you are looking for full closure, you won't find it here.  But as is, this Map is one without a compass.

 

PHOTOS courtesy of Fells Point Corner Theatre, photography by Ken Stanek.  TOP to BOTTOM: The Off the Map Company; Rachel Condliffe and Alex Hewitt; Michael Zemarel and Richard Cutting; Richard Cutting and Laura Gifford; Laura Gifford and Rachel Condliffe.

 

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