July 29, 2009
Levittown
LEVITTOWN
By Marc Palmieri
Theatre at Saint Clement's, New York NY
Closing August 1, 2009
http://www.cliplighttheater.com/
In Levittown, Palmieri is at his dramatic best as breaks away from expectations generated from the tittle of his play, specifically the assumption that the historical town itself will become a character or a symbol for the family in a generic (or perhaps Levit-like?) writer's formula. Instead, Palmeiri weaves the cookie cutter metaphor into the plot by focusing more on breaking destructive family patterns from generation to generation thereby diminishing the importance of the effect of a homogeneous community on the individual. This technique allows Palmeiri to build to a dramatic surprise resolution for his perfectly dysfunctional family.
The opening night at The Cliplight Theatre played to an open house. Throughout the night the audience was taken aback by the consistent display of bruised emotions in each family member. Levittown shows the life of a family with a difficult past who picks apart the possibility for each individual's positive future with doubts about whether happiness is even attainable. The daughter, Colleen is on the cusp of her engagement to a bland hotel manager, Brian, yet she struggles with believing in the possibility of it happening because she feels she isn't deserving due to her sordid past.. Unfortunately, Colleen's estranged father, Richard, agrees with her doubts and isn't afraid to embarrass her with them. Colleen's brother, Kevin, returns home after academic time wasting with the hopes of becoming a fireman like his grandfather, uncle and cousin Joe. All of the family members question the sincerity of his intentions with raised eyebrows that whisper, "Sure you do, kid."
"Fireman" symbolism, is weaved throughout the play, starting with Kevin's desire to continue the family tradition of putting out fires, to allusions of how Joe's father committed suicide, to the Grandfather's horrific recollections of the war that drove him to take up the vocation. In the outset of the play, when Colleen asks Kevin if he really wants to be a fireman, her doubt mirrors the doubt of the audience that the naive, ne'er do well in front of her is actually ready to face danger to save others. Colleen's doubt plagues the symbol whenever it is used in a scene. In spite of the fact that the "fireman" symbol is used to cap the ending of the play, it feels unbelievable in the face of the roiling fires of emotion that flare up in the preceding scenes.
The power of each character's emotions end up swallowing Tristan Colton's tepid performance as Kevin. Whether or not Director George Demas intended it, Colleen, played by Susan Bennett, becomes the protagonist by carrying the emotional weight of the performance, with believable facial expressions no matter what feeling she is working to convey, a casual control of dialogue and body language so astounding, one feels Colleen is a real person they have seen on the street. A surprising strong aspect to the staging of this play is the transition from scene to scene. In shadowy, dark blue light, the cast rearrange their position as well as the position of props, creating a ghostly effect, reminding the audience of the effect of memory's phantasms on present life.
All things considered, the unified strength of the cast and plot outweighs the detractions. Levittown is a play worth making a night of before this weekend's final curtain call.
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