TOTAL ABANDON
The play stems from a recent real-life horror story: a father who had brutally beaten his child opposed a hospital’s decision to take the comatose child off a life-support system–because if the boy died, the father might be charged with murder. When the story broke, I thought the maneuver was a typical lizard-lawyer ruse to delay justice and put the blame on the doctors if the boy died. An evil man wanted to evade a punishment he thoroughly deserved. It seemed so black and white.
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It wasn’t. Plumbing the other side of evil, Total Abandon tells the rest of a tragedy that facts alone could never explain–what we learn won’t let us forgive, but at least we know. Though the play opens with a psychologist droning the legal definitions of criminal intent and state of mind, soon the terms turn real. Lenny Keller, the father, refuses to bail himself out of jail and faces a hearing at which his court-appointed lawyer will try to get an injunction to prevent Tommy, Lenny’s brain-dead, one-year-old son, from being “unplugged” from life support.
I know that a compassionate explanation of Lenny’s crime sounds like a gutless extenuation of an unspeakable act. Don’t take my word for it, but when you feel Reid Ostrowski’s performance, Lenny’s crime of passion makes terrible sense. I hate to imagine the agonizing subtexts Ostrowski summons up to unleash his devastating, panic-stricken portrayal; but whatever the source, he delivers with precision.
