Contemplating What Hides Behind
Celluloid Smiles
Reviewed
11/17/05
Contemplating What Hides Behind
Celluloid Smiles
Reviewed
11/17/05
arizona
women’s theatre company is offering a cute, funny, and occasionally clever
original script in Monica Long Ross’ Complications.
Its concept involves life and death, but it is not all that earth shattering.
It uses as its base the home movies taken by a family in the 40s through the
60s that are projected on a center stage screen. We watch a dying Emma (Delores
D’Amore Goldsmith) float through her memories of her life with
the aid of copious amounts of morphine while her rather unlikable daughters,
uptight and pessimistic Ruth (Colleen Rustad-Sampson) and
younger spoiled Cece (Shannon Spicola) squabble over their
own faulty memories. She puts herself into her memories, or she lets younger
version of her self (Jenna Robino) interact with her emotionally
distant husband Carl (Christopher Daly) and the nurse (Richard
Briggs) who silently stands in as her lover on occasion. Director Deborah
Carrick guides her actors through the years, through the tears, and
towards a possible draw, the best that any family can hope for.
The smiling and waving of the family on the 8mm film is the façade that Ross breaks in showing this family’s turmoil. Sibling rivalry, affairs, and death lay behind these projected shadows. Carrick, who has shown herself as having an ability to work with ensembles here is given less to work with, and though Complications has moments of power, this production is undercut by some choices within the writing and some of the actors standing in as the family on the screen.
The Emmas are not the problem. Goldsmith is spry and very empathetic as the elder Emma, talking graciously to the audience and playing the slightly addled observer. Robino begins wide-eyed and much-too innocent and sure-footedly follows her sharp character arc through to bitterness and disillusion. Though little more than a puppet in Ross’ creation, Daly finds points of emotion that raise his performance. The problem rests in the flat, by-rote performances of Rustad-Sampson and Spicola, both of whom are unable to rise above the unfortunate simplicity of Ross’ writing of the sisters, playing their roles more for laughs, which makes it almost impossible to feel empathy for them as the crisis rushes towards its climax. Where the Emmas and their reaction to Carl is poignant, Rustad-Sampson and Spicola are merely comical until suddenly asked to be empathetic, and it does not work.
Still, Carrick has empowered a lot of what the script offers, keeping it rushing forward and light on its feet. The cleverness of intertwining Ross’ home movie montage, the reminiscences, and the dialogue is generally effective. There are a few little choices made that are also quite enjoyable. With more depth for and from the two sisters, this evening could soar. As it is, the strong work of Carrick, Goldsmith, and Robino makes this a worthwhile production.
