OFF OFF LOOP THEATER FESTIVAL
BDI Theater Company
COUP
On the surface The Letter could be seen as an Asian variation on Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun, with the primary question being how best to use the opportunity presented by a sudden windfall. But The Letter also addresses the question of how much responsibility children must assume for the suffering of their parents. Kelly speaks at great length of her mother’s hardships and elects to stay close to her, chiding the more independent Lynn for being absorbed in her own affairs. Yet it is Kelly who covets the money and what it represents for her future, and Lynn who, though refusing to dwell upon a past she never knew, votes to spend the money unselfishly.
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Theresa Carson, a member of the Kaleidoscope Children’s Theatre Company, delivers a superb performance as the most lovable human puppy since Dexter Bullard’s rambunctious canine in 1989’s Castrating Eugene. Just as lovable is Barry Saltzman as the silent and devoted Ira. Gary Brichetto does a nice Peter Boyle-style turn as Doobey, the cab driver, and Judy Goldschmidt does nicely as Fiona, Doobey’s ex-wife, though much of her dialogue is lost in her heavy accent.
I don’t know the identity of “Jane Martin,” but if dialogue is any indication, he/she has spent a large portion of time listening to the English language south of the Mason-Dixon line. “This will plumb turn his blood to Dr. Pepper!” says one character of her hotheaded husband. Another female declares a young man to be “so sexy you could lose your virginity just looking at him!” Beulah, “the last black domestic servant in the south,” sees Essie done up in a turban and blackface and snaps at her, “You get that shoe polish off your face or I’ll scrub it with a cheese grater and dry it off with a fence picket.” You won’t hear language like that in Massachusetts.
