Through Sun 11/6
Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Baker’s Body Awareness, directed by David Vegh, isn’t a nude fest (although sexual attraction isn’t ignored), but rather it’s a look at one small family and what holds them together. It’s one of those dramas that’s fun to think about later, as you ponder the various roles the four characters take in each other’s lives. In other words, it’s one of my favorite kinds of plays — a play with a take-away (forgive the rhyme, couldn’t help it).
The tight spaces in the Beck Center’s small Studio Theater provided a perfect venue for this “up-close and personal” look at one couple’s struggle to handle life, work and one partner’s difficult (to put it mildly) son. It’s billed as a comic satire, but while it’s snarky at times, I didn’t think it was funny. I did think it was moving.
Psychology professor Phyllis (Julia Kolibab) teaches in a Vermont college and, in what may be a desperate attempt to reach her students, has organized Body Awareness Week to bring speakers, song, dance and food to the campus. A fussy, sometimes overwrought, Kolibab conveys a sense of how ridiculous Phyllis’s ineffectual rhetoric makes her as she lectures behind a podium. Phyllis often veers off into personal rants (we are the students and we don’t know what she’s trying to say).
Phyllis and Joyce (a graceful Anne McEvoy as a long-suffering high school teacher) have been a couple for about four years. It’s evidently a happy relationship despite tension connected to Jared (Richie Gagen), Joyce’s adult son from her previous marriage. Jared still lives at home and refuses to accept that he might have Asperger’s syndrome. McEvoy’s Joyce is charmingly eager to please, but proves spectacularly unable to reconcile the demands of both partner and son.
As Jared, Gagen is marvelous, skating the line between caricature and reality to create a most convincing and, ultimately, loveable character. Gagen’s frank, energetic portrayal doesn’t patronize Jared with sympathy. The kid’s a sex-obsessed brat at times but he deftly shows how this conflicted character has made his life tolerable.
Life becomes even more complicated when photographer Frank Bonitatibus (even his name suggests joy!) is welcomed as a house guest during Body Awareness Week. Frank (a charismatic and sexy Rick Montgomery, Jr.) specializes in artistic photos of women, often nude. Joyce agrees to pose, a jealous Phyllis hates the idea, Jared gets some well-intentioned sex tips from Frank, and the whole place explodes.
Ironically, the surprisingly touching resolution celebrates true Body Awareness (popularly defined as the fusion of emotional, spiritual and physical elements) in a moving and memorable manner.
BOTTOM LINE: Highly recommended. Body Awareness is a touching, well-crafted, well-directed play, finely done by an excellent cast.
Purchase tickets at beckcenter.org or call 216.521.2540 x10.
[Written by Laura Kennelly]
Lakewood, OH 44107
One Response to “THEATER REVIEW: ‘Body Awareness’ at Beck Center by Laura Kennelly”
Edward Mycue
Seems just the kind of play to see and I hope it comes to San Francisco. I also love reading Kennelly’s reviews.