The Last of the Wine?...
Equity Showcase (closed)
by Louis Lopardi . . . December 15, 2001
GOING TO BORDEAUX is the latest of Richard Lay's bittersweet slices of life. Vincent is an artist crawling past middle age (he has both his ears) with a long-suffering and long-supportive wife Nell. Their single, eighteen year old daughter Dana is pregnant (by whom?) And his lithe art student cum sexual fling - ominously named Charley - together with enough wine make life in the wilds of Maine almost bearable, except for antagonistic seagulls. Why, anyone would dream of going to Bordeaux.
Erin Keefer was a suitably vampy vixen of an art student, much as is found in men's dreams of Maine campus life. However her New York whine was annoying, but perhaps was meant to be. The daughter, who vanishes for years to raise her baby away from overbearing parents, was ably played by Sarah Strasser, who downplayed her lines intelligently to adjust her age. Jeff Farber was a pefect Vincent, reducing some of the more colorful ideas of father and husband with a haze of red wine. Longing for the gallery world of New York, he convinces us of his malaise with tone and body language. But it was Michelle Esrick who truly broke free of the flat line delivery which plagued most of the evening. She is a natural, and watching her work is a never-ending delight.
Director Gus Smythe moved the cast about the stage space at the Jan Hus in a natural and appropriate manner, and he made imaginative use of a scrimmed alcove. He found humor in surprising places, but - surprisingly for this director whom I know to be a master of comedy - some jokes missed entirely. I suspect simply lack of rehearsal time to get both lines and timing in place. And the cast really needn't face each other for every sentence.
These characters communicate almost too well, as if someone said "listen to each other" a bit too often. The resulting problem is that they talk to each others ears, resulting in an often times flat, prosaic delivery, when the lines can be magical. Small examples: Phrases like: "five million bottles (of wine leave Bordeaux every day) to make the world happier" while comical, are ripe with lush imagery. The mother's speech about anger being the natural state of her husband, ending with his announcing "today I'm going to paint" is a minor gem in a classical mold, easily able to stand alone as an audition item. Magical items deserve highlighting.
For future productions - which are certainly deserved - the text could bear some fine tuning, if only to give the funnier lines a more foolproof setup. And earlier scenes could be combined and fleshed-out so as to give the play a real two-act structure. These are quibbles; yet even for a showcase production a word change here or there would have made a difference.
We actually do get to Bordeaux in the final scene, only to find that it is "foggy, and smells of fish" - Just like Maine! In a memorable comic miniature, Charley - now the lesbian lover and co-parent with daughter Dana - makes a surprise entrance holding a phallic baguette of French bread, in profile yet. Creditably Erin Keefer somehow kept a straight face. Granted, the plot tidies-up all too well by the end, and quickly too. As if wanting to get us home before we start bothering with real world problems. But this is, after all, a Bordeaux of the Mind - where the wine and the tomatoes are headier, champagne flows at breakfast, and even the seagulls seem a little friendlier.
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