Off
Broadway West has once again produced the kind of dramatic
experience I want to have: Deeply committed characters
reinventing themselves from moment to moment, making the time a
watershed of their lives and the evening an event in my memory.
In Without Mercy, Joanna toughens up to
survive the fatal collisions within her family. She challenges chaos by
demanding that her narrative dominate the conversation. But Bethany has her own
story as does a Sam, a counselor trying to serve the mother and
daughter. They
maneuver for position and throw their moral and political
lightning bolts across the room, trying to tell the myth that
everyone must repeat.
Patricia Milton’s script embraces and then
leaves behind a common theme, that of the salient individual
against society, trying to blossom forth into the world, blocked
by family or job or government or internalized trauma, finally
coming into being by action and idea after a struggle with
obstacles.
But there can be no blossoming forth as Bethany
and Sam unmask Joanna again and again. They insist on their
story but Joann is resourceful. The alliance between Bethany
and Sam breaks down in disagreement.
Each of the characters tries to turn their mutually shared
experience into an exclusive personal heroic saga starring 1
person. No one is
allowed to win.
The script has classical overtones. The actors don’t use physical masks but play as though they had trunkfuls. The performance is a competition among hubris-bearing mortals contributing to their own fatal and fateful undoing. The off-stage press echoes the chorus. With the ghosts of the dead daughter and father lurking off-stage, it looks a lot like The Libation Bearers with lawyers playing the Furies and the chain of incest and murder ending in a trial in which the individual surrenders authority to community.
Without Mercy is an
Off Broadway West Theatre Company production. 8
PM curtain Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays. 3 PM Sunday
Matinee March 12
The
Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason Street, 6th Floor, San Francisco
(between Geary & Post). No bad seats in this 55-seat
venue! $40 General Admission. TBA, Senior, Student &
Group Discounts Available
Advance
Tickets:
1-800-838-3006 or www.offbroadwaywest.org
OBWTC
is an award-winning, non-profit 501(c)(3) San Francisco theatre
company in its 10th Theatre Season.