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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Don't Wait for the Marlboro Man Also see Richard's recent reviews of Dark Matters and The Whale
Company founder Philip Boehm has translated from the original German, retaining a tantalizing European flavor in the script by Olivier Garofalo of Luxembourg. His play debuted in October 2019 at Theater der Stadt Aalen (in Baden-Württemberg) in Germany. Mr. Boehm elegantly directs the American debut of this 90-minute show as well. It's a play about two people in a tense hospital waiting room who've never met till now. But they've known of each other for some time. Sarah (Caitlin Mickey) has been engaged to marry a man who's suddenly the victim of a high-speed motorcycle crash, and Pedro (Isaiah DiLorenzo) is the victim's motorcycling buddy. As that fiancé/biker pal struggles for life, the two characters on stage circle one another over the disputed territory of his soul. Much of the spiritual dimension comes from a third person, a paradox-minded narrator played by the warm and wise Eric Conners. He adds quizzical stage directions spoken from the sidelines. But his physical presence regularly balances the visual imagery, highlighting Mr. Boehm's poised staging. And best of all, Mr. Conners lends a skewed new insight when words fail the uneasy pair. The dialog, like a motorbike tour, is full of wide-open straightaways and hairpin turns. In the fast-paced stretches, Don't Wait for the Marlboro Man reads like the conflicted blank verse of a dying man. In its more coiled moments (where Sarah tries to impose order on these child-like men), there's also a sense of whiplash from her suddenly crushed hopes and the blame she puts on Pedro. Our own hopes for grand conflict are traded for a satisfying cosmic metaphor: Pedro keeps an ant colony at home, which he insists will help Sarah understand her own life better. And a subplot about Sarah's work for (what is apparently) a shadowy arms dealer lends intrigue. But more ingeniously, a heart monitor off-stage rhythmically aligns with a broken-down vending machine in this waiting room, telling us everything we need to know about the struggle of the man in question, through sound effects. Michael Musgrave-Perkins and director Boehm designed that unsettling harmony, with additional musical accents to highlight a weird, pensive mood. In spite of my own instincts, I must confess that literary conceits (like ant colonies and broken-down vending machines) actually can make good substitutes for stage combat. In this case, they are "war by other means." Don't Wait for the Marlboro Man, produced by the Upstream Theater company, runs through April 28, 2024, at Kranzberg Arts Center, Black Box Theater, 501 N. Grand Avenue, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.upstreamtheater.org. Cast: Production Staff: Additional Production Staff: * Denotes Member, Actors' Equity Association |
