BWW Reviews: Sater's ARMS ON FIRE Doesn't Quite Ignite At Chester Theatre Company

Stephen Sater's ARMS ON FIRE has sizzle - in the form of Natalie Mendoza, singing Latin-inflected songs by Sater and Duncan Sheik. Mendoza's performance as Josephina, a now-deceased Honduran chanteuse, snaps, crackles, and pops as her songs, whether viewed in the past at her night club or heard on a collection of old vinyl by the men listening to her in an apartment in Hell's Kitchen in New York. Mendoza is a lovely singer and an actor with presence; the show comes alive every time she can be seen performing with her band behind the scrim.

ARMS ON FIRE has flame - in the form of James Barry as Smith, would-be hip-hopper, hipster, and hustler, trying to keep alive in a city that has never absorbed the boy from Iowa. If anyone can portray a hyperactive man with a mouth that moves faster than his brain, with a set of drug-use tics that one could anticipate the man would have, and a pseudo-intellectual rap that's full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, it's Barry, who is certainly one of the more intelligent and energetic actors on stage and who infuses Smith with a deliriously joyful adrenalin rush. Unfortunately, Sater's dialogue for Smith alternates between poetic lunacy - there is no doubt that Sater aims for comic effect in Smith's pseudo-Buddhist not-really-enlightened observations - and the purely ridiculous, leaving Barry fending for himself at times in trying to portray the character.

ARMS ON FIRE has some warmth - in the form of Guiesseppe Jones as Ulysses, a former Honduran DJ who now has something to do with nuts, and who plays his former flame's songs obsessively while speaking little. How he and Smith have become friends is never fully explained and what is portrayed seems unlikely, but for all his stolidity and his failure to communicate - balancing Smith's obsessive need to over-communicate - he clearly has an underlying humanity that fuels... something. If only he weren't quite so boring, or so addicted to merely saying "Si" rather than speaking in full thoughts.

What ARMS ON FIRE doesn't have, in its world premiere at Chester Theatre Company, is full ignition. The tinder's caught - the sparks ignited the small bits - and perhaps some of the kindling has, but the bulk of the combustible material has never quite caught. The Edges might have singed a bit, but that's as far as director Byam Stevens has taken it.

Perhaps that's as far as Sater's friend Stevens can take it, as this is a tale that is, for all intents and purposes, two men sitting around talking while listening to music. One's full of wild imaginings and can't stop sharing them; the other is older, burned out, and happy to listen to someone else ramble so he doesn't have to think about the pain in his past - the tortures of his relationship with the long-gone, talented but difficult, Josephina.

Certainly there are parallels between Ulysses' friendship with Smith and his former relationship with Josephina. Clearly he's attracted to over-excitable and somewhat unstable types. What does that mean, and where does it go? Sater doesn't tell us. What happens with it? We don't know. Smith and Ulysses are a fine bromance, but is there a point? Is there an ultimate conclusion? If this were Anouilh or Beckett, there might not need to be, but Sater is not that sort of playwright, nor is he that excellent a playwright. Sater is neither abstract nor absurdist, and rather than meditative, the play feels inconclusive. A little less conversation, a little more action please. This cast is without doubt capable of it. Stevens has given the production as a whole direction, but the play itself lacks it, and that lack of oxygen stifles whatever fire might otherwise have erupted had the main body actually caught.

What this production has is some fine set design and some very fine acting and musical performance. Mendoza and Barry are giving their all and then some, and if their characters are wild Latin chanteuses and equally wild, wannabe hipsters, drawn crudely or stereotypically, they are at least attempting to infuse these cardboard cutouts with life, and for the most part succeeding. If only the play itself fully lived up to the acting and the set, what a fine conflagration there might be.

There are elements of this story that are interesting. There are ways to tell it (perhaps to show it, rather than to tell it) that could be fascinating. Sater and Sheik have in fact done well in their effort to use music differently in a show here. One could only wish Sater had done so well in infusing more life into the bones. The same cast, at least as far as Mendoza and Barry go, with the right rewrite of this idea, could be a delight for an audience.

Through July 7 at Chester Theatre Company; visit www.chestertheatre.org for tickets or for more information.

Photo credit: Rick Teller

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