Displaying items by tag: Peter Moore

It’s Athol’s turn to speak. The lights have come up on his side of the stage and Morna fades into the dark background. Athol is sharing details about his nephew, Josh’s, visit. In this particular memory, Athol and Josh are having lunch at a pub. The conversation remains surface-level at the beginning. Athol and Josh’s mother, Morna, have not been on speaking terms for some time, and Josh seems to understand that it’s complicated. Then Josh shares that his mother was sick, and Athol is taken aback.

“You could have told me.”

“…You could have asked.”

The change in Athol’s demeanor is subtle, and Peter Moore plays that nuance beautifully. There is a small, quick pause before Athol changes the subject and continues on with the conversation. However, it’s clear that Athol is uncomfortable with Josh’s critique – especially because he knows Josh is right. Relationships are a two-way street, and this standoff between Morna and Athol has to end eventually. The question is, who is going to make the first move?

Written by David Harrower, A Slow Air is a two-hander that follows Athol (Peter Moore) and Morna (Kendra Thulin). The siblings have not spoken in years, and despite how close they live to each other, neither has taken a step forward to try and mend the relationship. Harrower’s play features a series of monologues from each of the characters. Over the course of the play, we hear each of their personal accounts of why the relationship is so estranged, and what each may need in order to overcome all the pain of the past.

Cleverly directed by Robin Witt, A Slow Air is deeply moving. Scenic Designer Sotirios Livaditis embraces the intimacy at the Edge Theater Off-Broadway – creating a playing space for the actors that leaves very little distance between the audience and themselves. The stage itself features a hallway with two doors – two entrances that are only used at the beginning and end of the play when the actors enter and exit. You may even find as an audience member that you almost feel like a scene partner in the story – a much-needed confidant as the characters muddle through their troubles. With so little to distract from the actors on stage, Witt lifts up the words themselves, inviting the audience into this estranged relationship. You may find yourself leaning in at times, feeling almost tempted to shake one of the characters into a different decision that could bring some healing.

It is no easy task to carry such an emotional play – especially with the added challenge of no breaks and only speaking in monologues to the audience. However, Thulin and Moore rise to the challenge with ease. The performances are genuine, and Harrower’s exploration of the relationship feels authentic and thoughtful. Family can be tough, and sometimes, the path to healing can take time – a journey that many in the audience are likely to understand.

Strong performances and clever directing make A Slow Air a night of emotional curiosity. Steep Theatre is often known for their grounded, thought-provoking productions. You just might find is a perfect addition to that list.

RECOMMENDED

A Slow Air runs through March 1, 2025 at the Edge Theater Off-Broadway – 1133 W Catalpa Avenue. See the Steep Theatre website for further information regarding tickets.

The Writer by Ella Hickson, now in its U.S. premiere at Steep Theatre under the sure direction of Georgette Verdin, is a maddening yet compelling exploration of art, power, commerce, and gender. It is messy, incisive, and brashly frustrating. It is the anti-Barbie, exploring patriarchy, empowerment, and self-determination in a world without a hint of pink. People in this world must earn a living, which really gets in the way of idealism. The Writer is full of unwinnable arguments, plus a few that where the victories are the opposite of what one would like them to be. In a loosely defined series of scenes and rebuttals, the eponymous Writer reveals herself through excerpts from her plays and scenes from her life, though the lines between these are deliberately blurry. Both in the fictionalized versions of herself, and in the real (but are they? —our narrator seems a little unreliable), the Writer spends much of the play defending herself and her work, with only limited success.

Verdin has assembled a fine cast of both Steep Theatre regulars and guest artists willing to throw themselves into the melee that is this play. Lucy Carapetyan plays the Writer with an edgy and anxious self-righteousness that invites sympathy but not empathy, and occasionally veers into unpleasant self-absorption. As her fictional doppelganger and sometime lover, Krystal Ortiz’s grounded presence often makes the Writer’s points more effectively than the Writer herself, while also showing the pitfalls of the Writerly vision. Peter Moore as the Director is tasked with representing the Patriarchy and does so with the right amount of creeping condescension tempered with a pragmatic humanism that allows his arguments to resonate more than Hickson may like—or exactly how much she would like. Nate Faust makes one want to like his characters, bringing a guileless charm to his roles as the character of the Director and the real-life boyfriend of the Writer; he plays the former with a disarming openness that makes his over-bearing attitude more grating, and the latter with a weirdly imperious lack of self-esteem. Jodi Gage and Allyce Torres take on multiple roles throughout, but especially in a second act scene that breaks both the conventions of the play and the urban setting, embodying a mythological world where women are freed from the constraints of patriarchal norms in a piece that seeks to surmount conflict and tension in a modern, tribal ritual dance (Successful? No... but it requires commitment from its performers nevertheless).

The design elements also reflect the ephemeral nature of the theatre experience and the idea that reality itself is an extension of this experience. The “staged” scenes are stripped to their essentials—performer and text, with occasional projections to amplify this relationship and break away from the more concrete spaces of the rest of the play. The scenes that presumably show the Writer’s real life are played on precariously assembled sets that only partially define the spaces that they create. Scenic designer Sotirios Livaditis has created deliberately artificial stage sets with visual counterpoints that reinforce the spaces’ connections to the Writer, though the many moving parts make for some clunky scene changes. As the Writer’s perception of reality shifts into the metaphorical—writing being a calling and a life—the lighting (by Brandon Wardell) and sound (by Thomas Dixon) reflect the increasingly tenuous scenic elements, and occasionally mirror the darkness and self-doubt of the characters’ thoughts. Costume designer Gregory Graham conveys the practical concerns of the characters (and creates the modern tribal costume—accessorized athleisure: why not?) and clearly defines the difference between those who need to project a certain image and those who are privileged not to do so. Movement director Claire Bauman creates a plausible performance art ritual dance. Intimacy Director Gaby Labotka struggles with the reality of the more intensely sexual moments as far as pacing and masking (there is a lot more blanket work than there probably would be if the characters were as alone as they are meant to be), and the beats of the intimate scenes feel both awkwardly slow and rushed.

Director Verdin mostly allows the ambiguities of The Writer to be as frustrating as Ella Hickson most likely intended. She also leans into the bracing humor and combativeness of the dialogue, which is often laugh-out-loud-funny, even as the characters struggle to find common ground or solid answers. Having been written at the beginning of the #MeToo movement, the play mostly deals with the power of institutional patriarchies to shape attitudes, tastes, social hierarchies, age (what happens when an angry young woman grows older?), art, and, yes, sex. There are brief nods to intersectionality and economic class, and Verdin’s production acknowledges that these nods leave several elephants waiting in the wings in order to focus on feminism. The play and production are smart enough to understand that this two-hour dialectic is premised on the privilege of being part of a world where art provides a living for some and is affordable to others. Most people will find something to nod in agreement with, and that may not always be what the person next to them is nodding about. Hickson has written a metatheatrical puzzle box of polemical arguments, but fortunately she has also created characters that go beyond their arguments, especially in the hands of a sensitive director and a talented and empathetic cast. The Writer offers an opportunity to question what makes good Art (theater specifically, but as a metaphor for capital-A Art), the role and responsibility of the artist in society, and whether art is an extension of patriarchy or a tool to fight it. It does not offer any answers, which may have some echoing the words of one of the characters, who demands in vain that the Writer “write an ending.” But then they would miss out on the opportunity to do so over drinks after the show.

The Writer runs through September 16 at The Edge Theater 5451 North Broadway, with performances Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 7:30 pm, and Sunday matinees at 3pm. For tickets and more information contact the box office at (773) 649-3186 or www.steeptheatre.com.