BWW Reviews: Epic Theatre's THE OTHER PLACE Doesn't Live Up to the Hype

Lately, more and more new theater companies are appearing in our area. This can be a blessing and a curse. While it's great to have so many excellent theatrical offerings, it can also make it hard for audience members to choose which show to attend or theater to support. For newer, younger companies, everything they do can make or break their future as a professional theater. One young company may or may not have done itself a favor with its very name, Epic Theatre Company.

Using "Epic" in a name carries with it an awful lot of potential for certain expectation. The word "epic" has come to mean a lot more than it used to, just think of the very common phrase "epic fail." Right from the start, Epic Theatre is potentially setting a very high bar for itself, giving the audience the impression that it's going to see an epic production of an epic story. That's a lot to put on yourself if you're a young company.

Reading the program notes for the current production, The Other Place, the trend continues. In the notes, the audience is promised a "tour de force" performance in the middle of a "riveting journey." Again, it's one thing to tease and hint about what the audience is going to see, to whet their appetite and raise their interest. It's another thing to raise their expectations, set a very high bar with no guarantee that it will be met. It doesn't help, either, to tell the audience how they should feel or think about a play before they even see it.

Once it gets going, The Other Place has a promising beginning. Juliana, a former neurological researcher, is giving a sales presentation for a new drug. More than giving the pitch, she's telling us about giving the pitch and what happened to her while she was discussing this anti-dementia drug with a room full of doctors. It becomes quickly apparent that things are not all what they seem and Juliana's life is quickly spiraling out of control. A few visits to a doctor's office later, and we discover that Juliana doesn't have brain cancer, as she believed, but rather a form of dementia, the very thing she has spent her professional life studying.

The script, by Sharr White, has more than a little in common with Wit and a number of other plays or movies about highly intelligent, independent women who are suddenly losing both their intelligence and independence. White's play is short and fast, for better or worse. In under ninety minutes, it flies by, not allowing much, if any time, for the moments to really register. Emotional bombs are dropped but don't get to resonate for very long.

In the middle of this bullet train is Juliana, not just the center of White's play but, it seems, his main reason for writing it. The character is on stage the entire time, often alone, in what is at times a one-woman show. As a whole, the play feels like White wrote the character of Juliana first, then tried to impose or create a story around her. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. There are absolutely wonderful moments, highly charged scenes, laugh-out-loud jokes and some great writing, but it all seems to exist only to service the character of Juliana and the actress playing her. One great character or role does not make a great play.

Luckily, Epic Theatre has an actress who is up to the task. Emily Lewis is put through the ringer in this role, going from a strong, steely, and smart to a disheveled heap, a shell of her former self. While there are moments that feel self-indulgent, she handles the role and all those ups and downs with an inner truth and believability. It's one of those performances that must leave her emotionally and physically exhausted, making it all the more impressive that she pulls it off so well.

As her husband, Ian, Robert C. Reynolds does not fare as well. The character, compared to Juliana especially, is not nearly as well-written or well-developed. His motivations are never clear and there are moments where he says or does things that just don't make sense in context. It's not a sympathetic or very believable character, the way it's written. So, perhaps Reynolds does the best he can with what he's given, it's hard to say. His performance is constantly at one level, turned all the way up, and that just doesn't work. When he makes sudden transitions from one emotion to another, yelling to suddenly crying, it just feels clunky or fake.

Two other cast members, Kerry Giorgi and Aaron Morris play the other male and female roles. Morris is hardly used but Giorgi gets many of the play's best moments or gets to be part of them. She's an excellent young actress who brings believablitiy and life to even the smaller roles of the three she's asked to play. When Giorgi and Lewis have an extended scene together toward the play's end, it is easily the play's finest moment, in part because the two actresses work so well individually and as a team.

That moment, when Juliana is literally back at "the other place" and encounters a strange woman, is when the play as a whole finally comes alive and becomes something special. It's almost too bad that the entire play is not about that moment, two complicated, broken women, how they got to that point and how their interaction changes them both forever. Unfortunately, Sharr seemed more interested in creating one "tour de force performance," rather than creating a fully-developed, compelling, entertaining an believable story.

Still, while it may not be epic, in the traditional sense of the word, it is a captivating and impressive performance by an actress and at least one other cast member. And it's a fine start for a young theater company that clearly has talented people and a future worth watching to see what happens.

The Other Place will be performed on the 22nd and 23rd at 8:00pm, at The Artists' Exchange, 50 Rolfe Square, Cranston, RI. Tickets are $15, $12 for students and can be purchased at the Exchange box office or through Epic's website, www.epictheatreri.org.

Pictured (L to R): Kerry Giorgi and Emily Lewis. Photo by Lara Hakeem.

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