THE DREAMER EXAMINES HIS PILLOW
Act Now Productions at Cafe Voltaire
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I suspect that a lot of the differences can be explained by casting, and by the fact that Act Now director Oliver Oertel never forgot that performance is everything. It would be hard to imagine three better actors for this play’s trio of working-class New Yorkers–a burnt-out painter, his daughter, and her sometime lover–than Patrick Carton, Seana Kofoed, and Todd Stashwick.
As Donna’s dad, Carton seems the least expressive of the three, though this is perfectly in character for a man who’s retreated into an alcohol-numbed seclusion following his wife’s death. By contrast, Kofoed kicks ass as the pissed-off pistol Donna. Watching her snarl, pace, and purr–she spits out with unnerving ease such trademark Shanley lines as “That amazes me. You amaze me. I am amazed” and “You talk about yourself like you were an isotope or something. Unstable to the nines”–you really believe she still aches body and soul for her fool of a boyfriend, though she’s murderously angry with him for “boffing” her 16-year-old sister.
Lightning in a Jar’s more complicated set at the Shattered Globe–in particular a large, heavy, awkward divider–proved one of the factors that undid their version of The Dreamer Examines His Pillow. Every time the divider had to be moved into place to signify the back wall of Tommy’s god-awful apartment, the action stopped dead.
Only Ike Eichling, as Donna’s father, turns in a performance adequate to the play’s dramatic needs. When the father reveals that his dead wife was the love of his life, you really feel his anguish and loneliness–he seems the most emotionally alive character in the play. But that in itself is a problem, since Donna’s dad is supposed to be nearly numb from years of repressed grief and heavy drinking–at least at the beginning. And Eichling, unlike the rest of the cast, is never numb.
