“Inside of a marriage that’s in trouble it’s like being inside of a hurricane,” said playwright-screenwriter-director John Patrick Shanley, the stupefyingly illustrious Bronx native who has won an Oscar, a Pulitzer and a Tony, among other things. “Even if it’s just two people sitting at a table having coffee, the subtext becomes a whirling mass of energy.”
Shanley’s play “Where’s My Money?” now at the Cherry Lane Theatre, follows several couples whose lungs have only breathed the air in the eye of a hurricane. “If you haven’t experienced one of these situations you might find it ridiculous, and if you’re looking from outside those relationships, they are ridiculous,” said Alex Correia, who directs the play. These relationships are darkly, darkly funny when you remember that these people are behaving like lunatics, and terrifying when you feel the gravity of their lunatic planets.
And then there are the ghosts. As Jonathan Judge-Russo, who plays Henry, explained, the supernatural in the play “changes it from a slow dance we do to avoid our s**t to like, here it is! like, in your house, strangling you...you can’t go anywhere to avoid it, you can’t go to a coffee shop.” In a play about overawing problems in relationships, the supernatural is a touch of the hyper-real, of how people are almost literally haunted by their pasts. Issues in screwed up relationships don’t get hashed out in reasonable discourse; the air just suddenly combusts. It’s a lot like a ghost coming through a wall.
Explosive performances from the whole cast leave you wanting to hug their extremely sorry selves.
“Where’s My Money?” presented by Animus Theatre Company (inaugural production) and featuring Rory Hammond, Jonathan Judge-Russo, Amy Northup, Jeff Todesco and Carrie Walsh will be performed at the Cherry Lane Theatre from January 28 through February 12. —Frank Thurston Green
No comments:
Post a Comment