BWW Reviews: Virago Theatre Company's AROUSAL and The Lover

Chloe Bronzan directs both shows, deftly combining comedy, pathos and drama to tell each story with imagination and integrity. She uses the intimacy of the Phoenix's 48-seat black box theatre to full advantage, creating alternating shades of boldness and humor with every facial expression and nuanced muscle or eye movement, effectively adding to the palette of meaning that the playwrights present. Indeed there were moments when you could almost feel the entire audience tense in reaction to the darting eyes or tensed muscles of one or both of the actors.

It was a stroke of genius to cast the same actors as the leads in both shows, deepening, as it did, the questions regarding reality and truth, who we are and who we present to the world, and the role that fantasy can play in unmasking hidden needs and yearnings.

Laura Lundy-Paine was brilliant as the hard-edged Ukrainian prostitute Albena in AROUSAL as well as the prim and seemingly proper British Sarah in The Lover. She was ably matched by John Steen who played AROUSAL'S naïve and unguarded Clifford, a 39-year-old man with Asperger's and also the incredibly uptight Richard, husband to Sarah in the Lover.

The first show up was AROUSAL, winner of the "Best of Fringe" award at the 2010 SF Fringe Festival. It takes place in present day San Francisco inside Albena's apartment where she conducts her prostitution business with great dispatch. When she's not working she's playing online Scrabble and between her profession and her pastime, she very rarely leaves her apartment. It's safer inside, where Scrabble letter points are always the same and she controls the scene.

She's unprepared for Clifford, who walks in telling her that he has Asperger's. She looks at him blankly. "I have herpes," she says, shrugging him off before she gets him off. (The initial encounter is bold theatre to be sure.) But Clifford wants more than sex. He's lonely and desperately needs a friend. When he attempts to get to know her she cuts him off saying "I not here," in her broken English. He doesn't understand, for clearly she is there. But is she? Even though they're sexually intimate, her inability to be vulnerable dehumanizes her, while his inability to filter his thoughts alienates him from others. Yet somehow they begin to connect.

It's a compelling new play though somewhat rushed and uneven at points. Early on there's a hint that Albena is emotionally damaged (and certainly her hard-edge says that) but Clifford's abrupt understanding of how she's handled her pain comes much too quickly. And his decision to follow suit seemed contrived and needed to be more realistically portrayed in order to match the intensity of the moment.

The most touching scene takes place when Albena is alone. Wordlessly she dons sweat pants and an oversized sweater then slumps to the floor, some unknown hell working shadows across her face. Lundy-Paine is poignant and real, making Albena's vulnerability transparent and sad. Pfirrmann's decision to allow silence here, especially in light of his swift and engaging dialogue, speaks volumes.

The Lover takes place in England in the 1960s at a time when the sexual revolution, free love and loosened boundaries were just beginning to surface into cultural awareness. Pinter, who wrote The Lover in 1962, prophetically captures the profound changes in the social mores with Richard's first words to his wife, "Is your lover coming today?"

And with that we know we're in a Harold Pinter play - the master of startling, almost jarring (albeit witty and clever) dialogue. It's really best to go beneath the dialogue and try following the subtext, gestures and pauses -- or better yet, to allow yourself to float along and wait to see what happens next. (Not that "all will be revealed in the end," but the entertainment and though-provoking value vastly increases if you do.)

Richard and Sarah are bored, suburban Brits who have a seemingly open marriage. Their perfunctory politeness and proper posturing -- distinctly at odds with what they are discussing -- supports this notion. But the fun begins when Max, the lover, arrives and we discover that he's played by John Steen, the same actor who plays Richard. Has it been deliberately scripted this way? Pinter doesn't give that away.

Lundy-Paine and Steen make the transition from the raw, edginess of AROUSAL to the staid, almost demure quality of the beginning of The Lover quite well. There's nothing lurid in their manner; they prattle back and forth with great comedic timing and nothing in their banal conversation gives away the fact that they're discussing extramarital trysts.

But the sexual tension that should be the undercurrent is not as present as it could be and, since more is said in Pinter's subtext -- in the negative space, if you will -- something gets lost in translation.

The mood shifts when Max leaves and Richard returns from work. When he starts asking Sarah questions about her lover that he's never asked before she becomes unsettled and off-balance. She's acquired a position of power in their sexual fantasy life and that is now being undercut by her husband. The two begin an aggressive power struggle that tests the boundaries of their love and their need for each other.

AROUSAL and The Lover form a great duo and make for a great night of theatre. The plays are beautifully performed by Lundy-Paine and Steen (with a humorous cameo by Steve Budd as the Milkman). Virago Theatre Company is developing a solid reputation for producing consistently thought-provoking and edgy theatre which helps keep the bay area theatre scene vibrant and fresh. The SF Fringe Festival has a slogan which says "No Risk, No Art." Virago gets that. I'd keep my eye on them - and definitely go see their shows.

AROUSAL by George Pfirrmann
The Lover by Harold Pinter

Now thru September 28

Directed by Chloe Bronzan

Virago Theatre Company

Photo courtesy of Virago