by Jerry Kraft
Seattleactor.com

Since arriving on the theater scene in 2010, Azeotrope has established itself as one of the most provocative, relevant, fearless and accomplished theater companies in Seattle. Director Desdemona Chiang, a co-founder of the group, has made it equally clear that in any production of hers you will never find a moment, a gesture, a breath, a word or a glance that is artificial or distracting from the impact of the production as a whole. When I first heard that they were doing two productions simultaneously at ACT Theatre I knew that whatever else was on the calendar at this busy time of the theatrical season, I would get to these shows. “Red Light Winter” was the first show they did in Seattle and it remains vivid in my memory in spite of all the shows I’ve seen since. “25 Saints” is a new play and that made it an even more irresistable attraction. If this company, and this director, said they were going to be producing a deck of cards I would be there for the first shuffle.

“25 Saints” is set in a run-down cabin on the outskirts of a no-name town in Southern West Virginia. The play opens with jarring brutality and over the course of the next 90 minutes never lets up on the tension, desperation, violence and despair of these ruined, endangered people. That first act of violence is an attack on a deputy sheriff who has just raped a young woman named Sammy, a close friend of Tuck and Charlie. They are involved with cooking one last batch of meth for a corrupt local Sheriff and his equally vicious accomplice, Duffy. Later, another of their associates, a pizza delivery girl named Sasha, will also be drawn into this vortex of blood and cruelty.

The play is not about the particular circumstances of any of these people. It is about the fact that all of these people are in situations where they have no idea where they are in their lives, how they got there or how they could possibly get out. It is quite likely that you may not know anyone in your own life who is involved in this particular kind of drama, but the genius of this play and these perfect performances is that we can see elements of ourselves, elements of our own struggles with ambition and morality and corruption, in each and every one of them. In the intimacy of this tiny room filled with people whose problems are bigger than their lives, we have half a dozen mirrors daring us to look deeply into them.

I cannot emphasize too highly how accomplished the acting is in this play. Tim Gouran makes Charlie a man who is as sympathetic as he is pitiful. He doesn’t want much, only some idyllic escape to a place that cannot be found in this life. Richard Nguyen Sloniker, an especially strong and assertive actor, here brings such hollowness and moral timidity to Tuck that it brings to mind the old maxim that “all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. Tuck wants to get out of all this, but how? I thought Libby Barnard was astonishing in the way she focused the character of Sammy as a woman who has compromised herself in so many ways she can’t even remember the person she once wanted to be. And Sasha, the pizza delivery meth-head, was played almost as the walking dead by Mariel Neto.

I especially appreciated that the “bad guys” in this play, the corrupt Sheriff played by James Lapan and his cohort, Duffy, played by Mary Murfin Bayley were never evil monsters, just despoiled on a higher level of awareness than the “victims” of their business. Lapan, in particular, brought such a convincing level of social standing and ethical certitude to the Sheriff that we felt less that he was a villain than simply a pillar of the way things are. Mary Murfin Bayley similarly was not vicious so much as she was simply done with feeling anything for others, and had only the vaguest memory of feeling anything for herself.

You may very well be saying that you’re not interested in spending an hour and a half with people like this, but I guarantee that after the first five minutes you will be no more be able to leave the theater than they are able to leave these hills. This is one of those shows where, following the climactic action, which could be nothing other than what it is, I think you’ll find yourself saying “Holy crap! Now that’s what they mean by drama!”. And while you’ll certainly be able to turn your back on that tiny, tawdry set, I doubt that you’ll be able to walk away from that place or those people. A playwright can only dream of having a script this beautifully realized.

Red Light Winter

Bad, or even mediocre productions tend to fade rapidly from the memory. The memory of a really outstanding show, however, tends to get even better over time. Azeotrope’s current revival of Adam Rapp’s  “Red Light Winter” was even better than my recollection of their outstanding 2010 production and the original cast, reprising their roles, simply couldn’t be better.

“Red Light Winter” is the story of a couple of college buddies, Matt and Davis, on a free-living European holiday and their subsequent lives when one of their great adventures comes back to haunt them. It is dark and sensuous and powerfully authentic, filled with undergraduate vulgarity. As sexually explicit as stage drama ever gets, it is really a play about love, about those who achieve it without wanting it and those who want it but can never achieve it.

Matt is an ambitious, insecure and self-defeating playwright. In the first scene he tries unsuccessfully to hang himself with his belt, but that becomes just another bad idea he can’t accomplish.  His friend, Davis, is a rambunctious, obnoxious player out to have as much “fun” as he can. As we find out much later in the play, he is not a good guy. An editor, he is already much more successful than Matt is ever likely to be, and his intelligence becomes simply another weapon he uses against Matt at the same time he declares he’s  “only trying to help him”.

In Amsterdam Davis hires a prostitute, Christina, to come back to their room and attempt to bring Matt back up to speed. In her sweet and enticing French accent, Christina is much more drawn to Davis, but she is certainly willing to do her job. In a beautiful, slinky red dress she arouses an almost forgotten desire in Matt, and after their all too brief coupling, he returns to America fascinated with her, in love with her, but never expecting to see her again. Even though he has uncovered the fact that her French persona is a fraud, and that she is just a girl from the Mid-west who came to Europe and didn’t want to go back home, Matt is certain there was something real, something important that happened between them.

In the second act, Christina arrives at Matt’s apartment, but only because that is the address that Davis gave her in Amsterdam as his own. Matt believes this is his one best chance to make something happen between them, and when she unloads all her baggage, the terrible reality of who she really is and what her condition is, it only cements for Matt that they now have a chance to really be for each other. While Matt is out of the room, Davis returns to get a phone he’s forgotten and doesn’t even recognize her. He’s engaged now and has no room in his heart or his mind for this cheap tramp from a drunken evening long ago. When he does finally get who she is (who she was) he rapes her and leaves. She has lost the last hope in her life and when she exits we know she is also exiting this world. Matt returns to a room more empty than it has ever been. We are left with nothing except a profound understanding of who these three people are, what they value and what they have lost. It’s an exceptionally well-written and convincing play.

As is usually the case, Desdemona Chiang exercises perfect control over these actors and allows each to pursue and reveal truths about themselves that resonate with us. Tim Gouran has the hardest part, in that he is the most obvious character, a man who is all about the big move and doing whatever it takes to give himself the best advantage. Gouran’s big achievement is in creating a character who is all surface, and showing us that his superficiality is neither wrong nor right to him because he doesn’t care about wrong or right, only about winning and losing. This is also not an easy villain, because he never proclaims himself anything but what and who he is.

Mariel Neto is excellent as Christina, who calls herself Christine in America and whose real name is Annie. Her French prostitute persona is delightful and she is both delicately beautiful and emotionally approachable, all behind a variety of facades. Although the play contains full-frontal male and female nudity, that nudity is never titillating. It is only the physical manifestation of the way that all these characters get naked in front of one another, get naked to themselves. Neto is so sympathetic in the second act that we fully understand why Matt fell in love with her, and why she deserves so much better than Davis, or the fate she’s been condemned to. As with each of these actors, the action of the play has no greater purpose than to bring us to a real understanding of who these people are.

Richard Nguyen Sloniker was perfect as Matt. It may very well be the best single performance in a drama that I’ve seen this year. He creates a character who is so decent, well-intentioned, inadequate and filled with doubt that we want nothing more than for any single wish to come true for him. In an extended monologue in the second act we saw more layers of character revealed in this apparently obvious man than we could have ever imagined. Sloniker’s control of tone and authenticity, strength and weakness, pursuit of self-truth and fear of its attainment was simply brilliant.

Don’t miss these shows. If you have to choose only one, you can’t go wrong whichever one you choose. Azeotrope is all about creating dramatic art, and with both of these shows they demonstrate their capability and their impressive competence. This theater company is a Seattle treasure.