DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA
Tight & Shiny Productions at Cafe Voltaire
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It doesn’t look promising at first. Roberta sits curled up into a tight little knot at her table, chin tucked truculently into her collarbones, attention riveted on the bottom of her beer mug. Danny is draped like a bar rag over his table, oblivious to the wounds he’s recently received in an alley brawl the cause of which he does not remember, staring morosely into his beer mug and occasionally stealing a glance through his eyebrows at the rest of the world. Eventually these two speak, but it doesn’t get much better. They don’t like each other. They don’t like their parents, with whom they still live though they’re both near 30. They don’t like themselves much either. Danny punches walls in inarticulate frustration. Roberta punches herself. Both have loved little and lost much and neither is going to chance making the same mistakes again. But out of this manure patch, on this warm Bronx night, romance will flourish and souls will be saved–with fists, if necessary.
Much of the show’s success is due to the actors’ sensitive performances and copious charm: Tim Sullens, usually cast as a buttoned-up brain boy, has a rip-roaring good time belching, crying, and boxing shadows as the stumble-footed Danny, and Deanna Shoemaker as Roberta displays an engaging feistiness reminiscent of the young Jane Fonda. Credit also goes to director Carri Coffman for keeping the pacing unhurried and the dialect clean, and to fight coach Frank Dominelli for his delicate handling of Danny and Roberta’s ritual combat–which has nothing to do with domestic violence, where the purpose is intimidation of the weaker party by the stronger. In ritual combat the two opponents are equally matched and neither intends any real harm to the other. To further distance Danny and Roberta’s scuffling from anything resembling abuse, Dominelli has Roberta initiate the fisticuffs.
