ICARUS’S MOTHER and
Raven Theatre
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The games these two creeps play operate on a system of reward and punishment, where the only stakes are belonging. A small airplane flying overhead prompts Howard to create a fantasy in which the pilot is waving to his adulterous wife–whose role he insists his girlfriend Pat take despite her discomfort. When Pat (played with tingling vulnerability by Adrianne Krstansky) expresses a desire to take a walk alone for a while, Howard leads Bill and the others–Bill’s girlfriend Jill (Kerry Richlan) and the nerdy hanger-on Frank (Adam Goldman) –in a ritual of ostracism so brutal that it reduces Pat to tears; then Howard’s aim shifts as he guides the rest of the group in mocking Frank’s wish to go off by himself for a pee in the woods. A later game brings the focus back to the airplane, which Howard pretends has crashed into the ocean; when that fantasy turns into horrifying reality, it’s as if Howard and Bill’s make-believe machinations can come true by sheer force of their viciousness.
There’s nothing subtle or ambiguous about Titanic, an absurd sexual farce written by Durang when he was still at Yale in the mid-1970s. Victoria and Richard Tammurai are a rich couple on an ocean crossing aboard the famous ship, whose one ambition is to sit at the captain’s table. Traveling with them is their son Teddy, whose psychosexual anxieties are (as Durang would title a later play) beyond therapy. Poor Teddy is still treated by his mother as if he were 14, though he’s more like 20; he’s the football that haughty Victoria and effete Richard kick around in their constant battle for psychological supremacy, and as long as he’s still their baby he can be the child for whom they resolve to stay married.
Michael Menendian begins his production of Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker by breaking down the imaginary wall that separates actors from audience. Even before the play begins, the cast members run through the small Raven Theatre in costume and makeup, yelling at each other to get ready and peddling iced tea and lemonade to patrons in the auditorium and lobby.
