More Water Please...

Review of H2O by Jane Martin at Arizona State University

Last week I saw a performance of a two-night only engagement of H2O by Jane Martin. Jack Reuler directed and the play featured three MFA students I had the great pleasure of working with on The Last Days of Judas Iscariot at Stray Cat a couple seasons back: Meg Sullivan, Tyler Eglen, and Adriano Cabral. It was by far the best ASU production I have seen in years for a myriad of reasons but it all boils down to this:

It was the least “ASU” production I have seen in years.

I began studying at Arizona State University in the fall semester of 2003 as a Computer Systems Engineering major. A few weeks into the spring semester I started to decide I didn’t really want to program code for the next fifty years (I’d much rather play video games than code them) and prepared for the transition to a pursuit of degrees in Theatre and Management. Even though I was outside the Theatre Department, I had friends in the program and – if I recall correctly – their 2003-04 season included The Laramie Project, How I Learned to Drive, subUrbia, and Our Town. Those are all wonderful plays in the right hands. The only one I actually saw was Our Town which was not as strong as I’d have liked to have seen for the department I just decided to spend the next few years in but I heard great things about all of the other (in truth, people praised subUrbia for years after).

Over the next few years, a couple things started happening.

1.  The department developed a Masters of Fine Arts cohort that was built around graduate student actors, designers, and directors all working together (in theory) over the course of a three years program. The initial cohort had nine actors, a few designers, and two directors. The guarantees that the programming support this cohort meant that a lot of the prime roles on the Mainstage productions that had been up for grabs before were doled out to the grad students first (not officially of course but that was usually the casting outcome).

2.  The work started straying away from known works that look good on a fresh-out-of-college actors resume (like Romeo and Juliet or The Seagull) and more into the realm of “avant-garde” (it wasn’t really avant-garde but it was definitely different and that was the easiest label to pin on it). These shows were often a blast to work on but audiences were left in the dark as to what it all meant.

Example 1: In a production of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus, I ran laps around the stage during the opening scene (parts of which were recited backwards – i.e. “backwards recited were which of parts”), the stage manager moved around onstage the entire show, ripping pages out of her script as she called them and throwing them aside, and me and a few other actors wrote all over each other in dry erase markers (pictured). I have no idea why these things happened as a person who worked on the show so it came as no surprise that half the audience left at intermission every night of the run.

Sadly...Dry Erase outfits never made it to Project Runway...
probably, I haven't watched in years.

Example 2: Caridad Svich’s Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (A Rave Fable) was easily my favorite show as an actor at ASU. I couldn’t tell you a thing about the story. It was pure spectacle. I spent an hour and a half raving to a live DJ (with a top of show rave devolving into a rape/murder scene – picture below), handling a web cam to film a scene of acted out with Barbie dolls (a spraying them with silly string because, you know, sex), and walking around as a giant baby handing out Baskin Robbins spoons (again: no clue why). The show was sold out most of the run because a lot of the students came time and time again for the simulated rave experience but a review from the East Valley Tribune said “this hyperstylized ‘Iphigenia’ largely fails.” Another great experience for the cast (and those who could get into the dancing) but a miss for your standard audience member over 40.

 There's a knife in my hands. You just can't really see it.

Since graduating with my theatre degree in 2008, the ASU cohorts have delved more into devised work.  This basically, based on what I’ve seen from these productions, means the person with the most passionate idea gets something thrown onstage because the rest of the people don’t care enough to fight it. This also tends to mean about ten non-writers scripting the show and sometimes two directors working at odds.

Fun Fact: The last of these devised shows that I actually sat through was POVV, which featured some Twitter integration. You could tweet with the hashtag POVV and your tweet would be featured on the walls around the show live. The night after attending, I created a Twitter account (@snarkystarkey) for the sole purpose of “hacking” into the show from backstage at A Streetcar Named Desire, the show I was in at the time (side note: now I'm tweeting most nights in the @midnight #HashtagWars).

Anyway, enough with the background. Needless to say, I loved H2O because it was pretty much nothing like what I described above. It was a straightforward story with interesting characters played by great actors. The set, partly due to the limitations of being a next-to-no budget applied project, consisted of some doors and rehearsal blocks. No over-the-top garish spectacle, just a simple design that allowed all focus to be on the performances.

Reuler’s direction kept the 90-minute show at a brisk pace and let the natural chemistry of Sullivan and Eglen run the show. Sullivan portrayed Deborah, a virgin Evangelical Christian actress who spends many of her asides to the audience explaining why her faith and acting are not at odds with one another. She walks in on, and prevents, a suicide attempt from Eglen’s Jake: an overnight sensation movie star best known for his role as Dawnwalker, a mute superhero. Jake is a hopeless man looking for answers but Deborah doesn’t feel she has the strength to help him. The two share an opposites attract, doomed-from-the-start romance as the recovering Jake casts Deborah as Ophelia to his Hamlet in an upcoming Broadway run. Adriano Cabral stands in as an always-silent-yet-often-intentionally-present stage hand, often sharing some sweet moments with Sullivan during the onstage scene and costume changes.

If ASU were doing more shows like this, I might be enticed to come back. But too often, sitting through an ASU production feels like watching theatrical masturbation: really fun for the cast but awkward and uncomfortable for the audience. Unless you’re into that kind of thing. No judging.