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Jennifer Chung - San Diego Union Tribune | Pat Launer - KPBS | Cuauhtémoc Kish - SD Theatre Scene
Lynx Theatre's 'Crave' probes dark depths of a troubled mind
By Jennifer Chung SD Union-Tribune
May 9, 2006
Lynx Performance Theatre's production of “Crave” has no set, no props, no real dialogue, no plot and virtually no physical action. Stripped of traditional
theatrical elements, the play's success lies in the force of playwright Sarah Kane's words and the strength of the four cast members.
Ambitious and challenging, "Crave”is more akin to spoken-word performance than theater. Kane's lavishly dark, intense play examines the inner workings of a
fractured mind “addicted to sickness,” contemplating suicide. Sonya Bender, Jo
Dempsey, Jennifer Jonassen and Andrew Kennedy give bold performances that delve deep into a mind at existential war with itself.
Lynx's production marks the local professional premiere of the British playwright,
who is best known for the controversy that surrounded her early work and the way
her life ended – her death by suicide in 1999 at the age of 28. The
semi-autobiographical work deals with Kane's own struggle with her depression, art,
sexual identity and past abuses. Though it may never escape the shadow of Kane's suicide, “Crave” is more than simply an exercise in psychological dissection of a playwright. The play merits theatrical consideration as a poetic meditation on love, loss and desire.
The tiny Lynx theater, housed within an industrial park in Clairemont, is arranged in the round. Audiences huddle around a small pit, with an actor in each corner. The stark and uncomfortably intimate setting – you could reach out and touch a performer – adds to the sense of tension and inescapability.
The chorus of unnamed characters speaks in overlapping monologues, random phrases, whispers and primal screams. They express rage and depression, touching on childhood abuse, rape, guilt, loneliness and loss of control.
Sixteen-year-old Bender, as the representation of innocence, and Kennedy, as the male part of the psyche, nimbly sprint through the rapid-fire vocalizations. Bender's singing is alternately childlike and haunting – singsong one moment, and approaching a Middle Eastern dirge the next.
Jonassen gives a gritty, appropriately abrasive performance as a representation of
the primal side of human nature. Dempsey, whose character embodies a mother figure, leaves less of an impression, and the different voices she uses for various personas – from raspy to sweetly innocent – tend to distract from the words.
Kane's clever, lyrical and piercing language reveals desperation for human contact and love, and an overwhelming sense of despondency.
In the frenzied pace and cascade of emotions, ideas can get lost. Words pile up,
and lines occasionally are swallowed in the cacophony of sound. Yet the play's sum
is greater than its constituent parts. The layers of voices are meant to be considered as a whole, like a gorgeous piece of frenetic chamber music.
Director Al Germani has carefully crafted the play's rhythm and soundscape (with
help from Bill Kehayias and vocalist Shelia Chandra), and the timing is impeccable.
Germani has shrewdly allowed silences and moments of emptiness to linger in the
air, and he has directed the actors to perform the 50-minute play with their eyes
closed. The characters are effectively disconnected from the audience, giving us a
voyeuristic, inside look at a mind falling apart.
Kane's play is a conversation of contradictions and opposites. The characters
simultaneously present hope and despair, defiance and vulnerability. “You're not as
powerful as when you know you're powerless,” notes one character. Fitting, then,
that “Crave” ends in a beautiful and chilling crescendo that can be read as a final
courageous act of dignity or the last refuge of a coward. back to top
"The performances are searing."
By Pat Launer, KPBS Radio
Crave is an extraordinary and an extraordinarily difficult play. It is
non-linear, devoid of a narrative arc, what Kane herself Kane called a “text for performance.” The ‘characters’ never interact. The rapid,
choppy, emotion-charged explosions overlap. Jagged shards of language
pierce the darkness and stab at the audience, while others go astray,
miss their mark and are lost in the ether. Under Al Germani’s precise
and painstaking direction, the actors are in seamless synch, but they
never look at or see each other, never in fact, open their eyes. They
sit, like an inward-focused string quartet, some with legs widespread
for a phantom cello, configured in a squared-off arrangement, with the
audience surrounding them, as close as a touch. They hunch over
microphones, which renders some of their output unclear, event
unintelligible at times. The relentless linguistic onslaught is
punctuated by brilliant bursts of silence; the primal screams are offset
by strained or pleading whispers. Recursive phrases reappear in unison.
As a psychotherapist, Germani is perfectly attuned to the language, pace
and emotion of the piece, which he has conducted with the rigor of a
demanding symphonic maestro. It’s a diabolical concerto, not for the
faint of heart, not for those who crave logic, reason, answers, plot,
characters. It all begins with an intense, unwavering tonal noise, the
kind that makes you meditate or go mad. It gets louder; it feels like a
jet roaring above you or perhaps something exploding inside your head.
It becomes a deafening, unnerving, teeth-gritting sound. And then it
slowly dissipates and dies away. And the barrage begins. The performances are searing, with 16 year-old Sonya Bender absolutely
mind-blowing, so gentle and tender and hurt, so innocent and knowing and
frightened and wounded. Also extremely potent is Andrew Kennedy (left)
as the various men in the piece (though some productions have featured
more than one male actor). He is confessional, endearing, irritated,
irate, conciliatory, unfathomable. Jennifer Jonassen plays one
note—anger—at varying volumes. As M (Mother?), Jo Dempsey stepped in to
replace the irreplaceable Linda Libby. Hers is a muted performance, and
not as clearly etched as Bender’s or Kennedy’s. Perhaps it was my seat,
but I often found her words hard to decipher. We hear that Bender lost a
mother, Dempsey wants a child, Kennedy is a pedophile, Jonassen is
addictive, homosexual; Bender is trying to remember, she wants to die
(“I’m having a breakdown because I’m going to die. I’m evil. I’m
damaged. No one could hate me more than I hate myself”). “I crave,” they
say in unison, each expressing a desperate need for something they do
not, may not ever, have. “Put me down or put me away.” “The loss,” they
wail. A mother beats her child, a man beats his wife and their child
watches but does nothing. A murder is committed. A child is conceived in
rape. And so it goes, for 50 relentless, expressionistic minutes. “What’s anything got to do with anything?” Bender asks at one point.
You’ll just have to figure it out for yourself.
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"This dramatic journey . . . is nothing less than brilliant "
By Cuauhtemoc Kish, SD Theatre Scene
Director Al Germani embraced Playwright Sarah Kane’s Crave like a father
discovering a long, lost child. Imbuing life into this piece with such
tender articulateness, it lives even beyond the intentions of the author. The author may cry out from her ash-filled urn ( Kane committed suicide on February 20, 1999) in thanks to a rendering that is nothing less than mesmerizing.
An intoxicating, almost hypnotic air invites the
audience to transport themselves on a neuropathic journey where
discovery belongs less to the author and more to the watchful listener.
Four actors, eyes wide shut, connected by neuron-like cords, become one
on this journey into the subconscious. The accusations begin with the
very first words uttered, “You’re dead to me”. The ensemble (Sonya
Bender, Jo Dempsey, Jennifer Jonassen, and Andrew Kennedy) make up the
four roles assigned: C, M, B, A.
Within each soul-scape performance
there is a range of emotions that covers much territory. Each actor has
tuned and warmed his instrument, playing well a myriad of notes. This
intoxicating quartet harmonizes like a lullaby at times and then breaks
off into strident, edgy, seductive, angry, consumed, pained soliloquy.
There are opposite emotions that intertwine with relative sanity, but the application from Kane’s journey to yours is up to you. You make the
connection; you align with the unsettling ambiguity; you determine the
parameters of the emotional rollercoaster ride. And most important,
you determine, even if you have left the theatre space hours ago, when
to get off.
Sonya Bender breathes emotion into every beat; Andrew Kennedy explores
the lowest depths and soars to higher ground with ease; Jennifer Jonassen
makes anger her forte, and Jo Dempsey cradles pain like a mother/child
reunion. They are superb.
Al Germani allowed for Kane’s musical, internal cacophony to sing
melodiously with his exact direction and pacing. He modulated
multi-levels of anxiety and allowed for orgasmic moments with just a
pause. He allowed primal breathing to explode within each one of his
actors and plucked musical chords of great depth.
The sum of this experience, assisted with musical direction from Bill
Kehayias, is intoxicating. This dramatic journey into a fragmented self
is nothing less than brilliant.
(Crave runs through June 11th at the Lynx Performance site; demand a
ticket immediately by dialing up 619-889-3190).
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