My overall impression
RICHARD ADAMS, The World Socialist Website (to be posted soon)
This world premiere written and directed by Paul Hoan Zeidler features Charles Pacello (Maple) and Etienne Eckert (Glennie). Glennie and Maple’s story is told in a series of five “morning afters” that track their on-again, off-again relationship. Glennie, damaged by an abusive relationship with a former lover, struggles with depression and battered self-esteem; Maple revels in his role as her self-appointed savior. She resents his unshakable sympathy, he resents her lack of appreciation. It’s a recipe for dysfunctionality that only Glennie seems to understand. But Maple is hardly a flawless shining knight: he insists on measuring the state of their relationship by whether or not he can bring Glennie to orgasm, blaming her when he can’t, self-congratulatory when he finally does. Their relationship takes a final twisted turn when Glennie forces him to admit that he’s become romantically involved with Glennie’s best friend and Maple suggests that they continue their “affair,” offering a plan that will keep the best friend from ever knowing. Glennie seems to agree, for now, but who knows what the next morning after will bring. In each of the five scenes there was a single moment when one asked the other the kind of question that, depending how it’s answered, will determine their relationship’s future. These moments created a profoundly charged silence in which the looks between these two spoke volumes: such as when Maple asks Glennie if, during their futile love-making if she’d been “thinking of Ricky?” the abusive ex; or when Maple asks if her recent orgasm was real or fake; or when Glennie asks if there’s another woman. It’s a tribute to Zeidler’s writing and directing that these moments stand out, and a testament to the emotional honesty of these fine actors that, in those moments, we hold our breaths and hope they’ll somehow survive the answers given.
Eckert fully captures the fragility of this damaged woman, her pain, the delicacy of her resilience, and her self-destructive impulses. That vulnerability allows us to understand why Maple might want to shelter her from the storms. Pacello is utterly convincing as the good, decent, caring man who’s reaching the end of his tether with this woman he clearly loves; and equally convincing as the kind of man oblivious to his own self-serving manipulations. The ultimately fraudulent nobility of his struggle to stay the course matches Glennie’s poignant self-delusions of remaking a tract house into an oasis of calm.
