by Maia Jannele
If you dare leave the comfort of the lower Queen Anne theatre district, venture just a bit farther south past the glittered sidewalks of Pine St. and 5th Ave., and head to a less glamorous part of town, you’ll find Seattle’s newest theatre company, Azetrope, going literally balls out at Theatre Off Jackson in Adam Rapp’s provocative, intimate drama, Red Light Winter, directed by Desdemona Chiang.
When old college buddies Matt (Richard Nguyen Sloniker) and Davis (Tim Gournan) embark on a seedy adventure in Amsterdam, one is on the committing suicide with his belt in their hostel room before the other serendipitously bursts in, unknowingly about to save his friend’s life with a sexy gift from the red-light district, Christina (Mariel Neto).
It’s fairly easy to sympathize with dejected, suicidal protagonist, Matt, after spending just a few minutes in the first conversation between him and the loquacious, conceited Davis. With friends like these, who needs…a reason to live? He’s currently engaged to Matt’s ex-girlfriend, pumped-up on his recent book publishing success (after picking a best-seller from his company’s “slush pile”), and seemingly feels like doing his cohort a good deed by bringing home a French-accented prostitute. Meanwhile, the emotionally arrested Matt is a burgeoning (sic) playwright who’s never had a work produced, and is recovering from a case of Giardia and a broken heart.
Gournan devours Rapp’s acute dialogue as the caustically cocky Davis. Sloniker is as conceivable as your awkward, frosh-year roommate in his turn as the insecure, self-deprecating Matt. As Christina, Neto nails the “mysterious, French ingenue” ruse, occasionally chiming in with an affinity towards Davis, while he and Matt continue their profane repartee about the merits of Henry Miller, et al. When she temporarily leaves the room to prepare for her impending duties, Davis regales Matt of how he picked her up, revealing he’s already sampled her unforbidden, clean-shaved fruit.
After their explicit (warning: full frontal male and female nudity) yet somewhat tender encounter, Matt is immediately smitten with Christina. Unfortunately his love is unrequited, as she can’t stop thinking about Davis; hung up on their aforementioned tryst, she’s convinced they made love, and he really meant it. When she shows up sick, cold and broke on a New York doorstep a year later, the story takes a sordid turn. We find Matt sequestered in his tiny apparent, plugging away at a new script about two friends and their encounter with a prostitute in Amsterdam. I doubt he could have imagined how their story would ultimately end.
Despite the irrational and at times implausible relationships Rapp created for these characters, the Azeotrope cast evokes pathos with aplomb and makes a fine debut with this performance. Red Light Winter is explicit, affecting, biting, witty, and downright unsettling. And damn good.
Red Light Winter runs through November 13th at Theatre Off Jackson.