Partial Comfort Productions

…a matter of choice

New York Times reviews
‘Next Stop, Gentrification, Everybody Out’- By ANDREA STEVENS
March 28th, 2005
The Second Avenue subway may not be built yet, but in Chad Beckim’s frequently compelling comic drama “… A Matter of Choice,” it catches three roommates in Spanish Harlem off guard and symbolically runs over them. Gentrification had put these stalled 20-somethings on edge anyway in the place where they really live: private hells of their own.

Diggs, a bitter procrastinator and the primary renter of a three-bedroom apartment, grew up in the neighborhood before the newcomers and their money arrived, and he yearns for what was. Chastity, a lonely, angry Latina, talks tough but can’t follow through. Webb, who is black and gay, is a masochist ensnared by a sadist. When the city decides their building is coming down to make way for the subway, they have to get out. Will they stick together as a substitute dysfunctional family? The writing is on the wall (spray painted): “You are alone.”

And, yes, they are types, and the play could be shorter, but many of the lines – and the actors – are good enough that you forget the nascent clichés as the story and the performances draw you in. It is a compliment to Mr. Beckim’s first time out as a playwright that this happens even though some of the action occurs in a corridor behind the audience. (A large mirror reflects it.) Given the narrow space in the storefront theater, the director, John Gould Rubin, may have had few options, but the effect distances the audience emotionally at several intense moments embellished by the fight director Qui Nguyen’s scrupulous work.

Mr. Beckim is helped most of all by the cast. Jeremy Strong is close to perfect as the surly, hilarious, emotionally needy Diggs, the frozen center around whom the others revolve: Sarah Hayon as the unhappy Chastity, Nyambi Nyambi as the conflicted Webb, and four visitors. They are John Summerour as Michael, Webb’s manipulative, violent boyfriend; Sharon Freedman as the spacey Karen, Diggs’s sometime girlfriend; Molly Pearson as Madison, Karen’s friend, who finds slumming amusing; and Chris Chalk as Boo, a funny, potty-mouthed felon and pal of Diggs from grade school. All these characters use the English language as if they had created it, so the conversations are like vernacular fugues – much of them unprintable in this newspaper.

In 2002 Ms. Pearson, who is slyly witty as Madison, and Mr. Beckim, an actor, founded the collaborative ensemble Partial Comfort Productions, which, with Chashama, is presenting the play. Their choice was a good one.

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http://www.talkinbroadway.com/ob/03_24_05.html

Off Broadway- Not Your Grandmother’s Theatre
By: Lindsey Wilson

Ever been to the house of a “friend of a friend” and found yourself sitting mute on the couch, suddenly in the middle of an extremely personal, highly intense spat between roommates? If you choose to see …A Matter of Choice, currently performing at Chashama Theatre, you’ll not only know the feeling, but you’ll know it uncomfortably so.

Upon your entrance into Chashama Theatre, you are tossed into the living room of Chastity, Webb, and Diggs, three twenty-somethings making do and having a ball on 116th Street. Life is seemingly perfect (and what wouldn’t be for three large bedrooms at $900 each a month?), until that unlucky message from the MTA arrives informing them they must vacate before the construction of the 2nd Avenue subway commences. Suddenly facing the possibility of relocating to Staten Island, the three roommates explore different options and confront each other’s true personalities while trying desperately to plan out the rest of their lives.

Chad Beckin’s new play focusing on the mundane annoyances and life-altering alternatives of this jaded, embittered counterpart to “Friends” is at once simplistically routine and dramatically irregular. Faced with eviction or relocation, each of the roommates is forced to re-examine their pre-existing relationship with each other as well as the imminent direction of their own life. Conflict arises as deep-seated provocations become clear. Several satellite characters float in and out of the action and provide some of the best performances of the evening.

As much as director John Gould Rubin successfully prods his cast into delivering frighteningly realistic performances, it is these performances that sometimes overpower the show. Combined with the acoustics of the space, the escalating arguments between cast members can reach an ear-splitting pitch that turns the lines into little more than echoing screams. Couple that with the immediate proximity to heavy stage smoking (a fan is used to direct it away from the audience, but the smell still lingers) and cramped seating space, Choice teeters on the edge of just plain uncomfortable.

To see the collection of oddly assorted people who end up in this doomed apartment is intriguing, though. Jeremy Strong steals the show with his mellowed-out, aimless, Giovanni Ribisi-esque portrayal of Diggs, while Sarah Hayon’s explosive convictions provide a nice balance. Also extremely enjoyable is Chris Chalk as Boo, Digg’s recently paroled drug buddy who reveals a more sensitive side as the play progresses.

Slightly disappointing are those trapped within the main relationship conflict, Webb and Michael. Nyambi Nyambi as Webb gives a fairly bland performance, and John Summerour isn’t as responsible for Michael’s confusing depiction as the innate structure of his character is. Also head-scratching is Molly Pearson as Madison, who really seems to have no lasting purpose other than exposing Digg’s drug stash.

What is especially memorable about Choice is its set design and theatre configuration. Lex Liang’s idea works brilliantly by providing the audience with unusual angles and non-traditional staging, and some of the show’s best moments are played out behind our backs. Thanks to a large mirror positioned to face the audience, the “hallway” scenes greatly increase the voyeuristic atmosphere and contribute to its uniqueness.

Due to its gritty content and overtly realistic violence, some might find Choice to be a little too real for their tastes. Others, especially the urban twenties set, might see shocking parallels to their own lives. As for me, I’m still gracefully trying to make my exit from this discomfited party without angering its arguing hosts . . .

The Bigger Man

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/ob/07_02_05.html
Off Broadway- Not Your Grandmother’s Theatre
By: Matthew Murray 2005

The best plays have both plots and personalities, but one or the other will do in a pinch. Sam Marks’s The Bigger Man, currently at Center Stage, contains threads of story so inordinately thin that they’re almost undetectable by the naked eye. Yet somehow, what should by all rights be a throwaway evening is instead highly watchable and even enjoyable.

It never quite reaches worthwhile, though – for that Marks simply would have to write more. Not increase the length, mind you – at scarcely an hour and a half, the play feels overlong now – but provide depth and weight to the story he’s concocted so that the hints he drops at bigger issues could be more fully explored. Marks touches on growing up, letting go, settling for the safe choice when the more enticing one is too dangerous, but as written, these ideas coalesce into no greater social messages, no trenchant insights into the human psyche or romantic relationships.

Unoriginal ideas can still be successfully repackaged, though – the sitcom Friends, for example, was made special by the unusual alchemy of its cast members, the interactions, subtle and exaggerated, that changed everyday dialogue and hoary laugh lines into something more than existed solely in the writing. That’s exactly what happens inThe Bigger Man: Commonplace complaints sound new, familiar emotions feel fresh, and creaky jokes bring down the house.

The play focuses on five people tripping over each other in a shabby motel – one character describes it as looking like “where horror movies go down” – the night before a wedding. Planning the trip to the altar is Lily, who’s invited her smoldering old flame Len, his friend Rick, and Rick’s girlfriend Stacy to witness the nuptials. Complications ensue (as they always must) when Len falls afoul of Lily’s brother Jerry, interrupts what he believes is a secret cult ceremony, and consciously and unconsciously attempts to ruin the wedding despite bearing Lily little surface ill will.

The story meanders and lurches, moves in circles, and dithers continuously before arriving at its pre-ordained destination. Louis Moreno’s direction is adequate but undistinguished; Lex Liang’s run-down hotel set is striking for both its low-budget tackiness and its transformative capabilities; Liang’s costumes, Jason Jeunnette’s lights, and Zach Williamson’s sound design are at best workmanlike. There’s not a thing you haven’t seen or heard before. Yet every time an actor opens his or her mouth, the play comes unexpectedly alive.

Mark Alhadeff brings a fiery, borderline frightening intensity to reformed delinquent and reforming druggie Len, and the series of increasingly desperate actions he performs for or about Lily never seem out of line for the character. Molly Pearson makes you intimately aware of what he sees in her: She’s spunky and intelligent, adventurous and just a little bit dangerous, the kind of person who pushes others just to the edge, but no further. They share few scenes together, but their chemistry is palpable.

Rick and Stacy – as volatile as Len and Lily, arguing as often as they breathe – are no less convincing: Sharon Freedman conceives Stacy as a less-expert button pusher who’s not above resorting to loud, angry tactics to get what she wants from her too-independent partner. Greg Keller, who has a Matthew Perry-like charm and a razor-sharp comic line delivery – how many people could make the line “Did you steal something? ‘Cause you seem mad chipper?” almost unbearably funny? – is a stupid but sweet Rick who you can’t help rooting for. Their big fight scene – which does all but peel paint off the walls – is an irreplaceable comic centerpiece.

Barnaby Carpenter has it much harder as the overly intellectual Jerry, and gives the least compelling performance; his role is at best functional, a way for Marks to move everyone around where and when he needs them, and Carpenter’s work is commensurate with that. He doesn’t lack conviction, though, and everything he does seems committed and emotionally justified. But none of it’s interesting, though that’s understandable: Jerry’s speeches – coyly confronting Len about his drug use, trying to explain the bizarre “healing” ceremony Len bursts in on – aren’t actable in the conventional sense.

Nothing in the show really is, of course; that’s why its relative success is so shocking. It’s a play that shouldn’t work at all, that shouldn’t connect emotionally or comedically, yet somehow does. On first glance, Lily says it best: “There are more important stories than this one.” But upon reflection, the play’s title page description seems, ironically, even more apropos: “Every successful relationship starts with a solid Foundation.” Yes, but The Bigger Man reminds us that impossibly weak foundations can, against the odds, sometimes produce successful shows.

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