CAVE LIFE
The play revolves around Charleston Silvers, a sweet, psychotic tour guide for a museum of natural history. Charleston’s psychosis comes out in her hallucinations–well, actually she has just one hallucination, but it’s a doozy. A Neanderthal man named Enki appears whenever Charleston is in turmoil; mostly he wants to make love to her.
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In Rappoport’s wild world, however, Enki doesn’t seem so very unusual. Husband Frank is none too sane, amusing himself by playing “train wreck” with his brain-damaged son from a previous marriage. Frank’s mistress is a chain-smoking nymphomaniac, with an appointment book for scheduling her many men and a husband who understands and encourages her many liaisons. And when we meet Charleston’s abusive mother, a woman with a far more tenuous grasp on reality than her daughter has, Enki starts to seem awfully tame.
No, Rappoport does not do peace. Or hope. Or happiness. But he does do humor. In spite of its bleak story, Cave Life is jam-packed with humor–black, of course. Without that, audience members might have to have sharp objects removed from their possession as they leave the theater. It is that beautifully crafted mix of humor and despair, reality and hallucination, danger and safety that makes Cave Life such an intriguing play.
But despite everyone’s best efforts, it’s easy to leave Griffin Theatre thinking you’ve just seen a nice little play. And Cave Life is anything but.
