Spring Break
Society Hill captivates audiences with new play
Jessica Herbine
Issue date: 4/24/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment
When you think of a story in which every character ails from a deranged, disoriented and discombobulated psychosis, the genre "comedy" rarely comes to mind. Same as when you think of a lover, a convict locked up for first-degree murder - hardly fits the common description. With accomplished playwright Nicky Silver, it is hard to imagine any character or circumstance that might be characterized as ordinary, nevertheless, result in a predictable outcome. His play "Raised in Captivity," which won the Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Play in 1995, opened at the Society Hill Playhouse April 16 and introduced audience members of the Red Room to a handful of colorful characters and their abundance of personal problems.
Silver's tale, directed by the brilliant and resourcefully abstract G. DeCandia, mocks the arrogance of a Greek drama while hysterically disassembling the "normality" of the typical American family. The dysfunctional family members who enter and exit DeCandia's stage - conceptual white surfaces and stairs, outlined in black and opening for a grave and jack-in-the-box entrance effect - are so unacquainted; they might as well not be related at all.
The play opens when brother and sister Sebastian and Bernadette, joined by Bernadette's flamboyant and creatively-ambitious husband Kip, are forced to reconcile at their mother's funeral. Sebastian is an antisocial writer, alone after leaving the house at 16, and then being left by his only lover, who passed 11 years prior. Bernadette, on the other hand, is a talkative mess of insecurities and indecisiveness; she is a bomb ready to explode into tears or screaming tangents in the occurrence of any event which she cannot take control of. Both siblings come equipped with a slew of one-liners, but the true comic relief from this dark play comes from Kip, a dissatisfied dentist who discovers his passion for the unprofitable profession of painting, gaining a certain Buddha-esque peace through the identification of his ideal career and the promise of positive change it brings.
Silver's tale, directed by the brilliant and resourcefully abstract G. DeCandia, mocks the arrogance of a Greek drama while hysterically disassembling the "normality" of the typical American family. The dysfunctional family members who enter and exit DeCandia's stage - conceptual white surfaces and stairs, outlined in black and opening for a grave and jack-in-the-box entrance effect - are so unacquainted; they might as well not be related at all.
The play opens when brother and sister Sebastian and Bernadette, joined by Bernadette's flamboyant and creatively-ambitious husband Kip, are forced to reconcile at their mother's funeral. Sebastian is an antisocial writer, alone after leaving the house at 16, and then being left by his only lover, who passed 11 years prior. Bernadette, on the other hand, is a talkative mess of insecurities and indecisiveness; she is a bomb ready to explode into tears or screaming tangents in the occurrence of any event which she cannot take control of. Both siblings come equipped with a slew of one-liners, but the true comic relief from this dark play comes from Kip, a dissatisfied dentist who discovers his passion for the unprofitable profession of painting, gaining a certain Buddha-esque peace through the identification of his ideal career and the promise of positive change it brings.
Be the first to comment on this story