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The Rice Thresher
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Elizabeth Jardina thresher staff
The student-written plays are interesting for that fact only, but inconsistent acting and occasionally confusing writing harm their total effect. Will Rice College senior Samantha Liskow's "Five-Liquor Cocktail" is the most sophisticated of the pieces - so sophisticated it's entirely baffling. It's hard to tell who the characters are and what kind of relationship they have until well into the piece. Wiess College senior Darya Pollak plays Sophie, a self-centered and thoroughly unlikable character - a disappointing realization to come to about a protagonist. I was glad it wasn't a full-length play - spending 10 minutes with her was a trial. She is dining at an Asian restaurant with her boyfriend, played serviceably by Wiess sophomore Darius Roberts in a prominently fake mustache, although he hardly has much of a part. Roberts' play, "How to Lie, Cheat, Steal and Talk on the Phone," is the lightest of the original works in the set, and the most successful. It's the story of three ordinary folks who fight big corporations by keeping them on the telephone as much as possible. The theme isn't exactly subtle, but even occasionally awkward acting can't hide the good-natured fun. Lovett College senior Nathan Zumwalt gives a standout performance as a slimy lawyer representing the Corporate Man. "Leah's Song," by Jones College senior Altovise Rogers, is marred by Lovett junior Tomi Fatunde's poorly enunciated delivery. Fatunde acts with verve, but between the dialect and her lack of projection it's hard to understand her. Also a problem is the unlikely relationship between the mother (Fatunde) and her daughter Jessica (played by Wiess freshman Sarah Pak, who is Asian-American). I can suspend disbelief, but an Asian girl speaking in African-American dialect - and badly - is too much for me to handle. In "Indecisiveness?" by Jones sophomore Julie Tam, the actors valiantly try to salvage the play, but unclear writing and misguided direction overwhelm the performance. A woman (Will Rice junior Nancy Gresham) announces to her live-in fianc‚e (Lovett freshman Andrew Engroff) that she doesn't want to get married and she's seeing someone else. But the situation is treated as sheer comedy. The acting is too natural to belong in a farce, but the play is too absurd to be anything else. The final play in the set is "Post-Millennial Anxiety" by Wiess sophomore Victoria Zyp, set on New Year's Eve 1999. Two looters (Hanszen College sophomore Sunil Patel and Wiess junior Marco Campos) go to the catacombs beneath Rome to steal a valuable portrait of Christ. The infamous Y2K bug strikes, and chaos ensues. It's an odd play to produce in 2001, when everyone knows that the transition between 1999 and 2000 passed with almost no effect. Gresham also appears in this play as Time, and while her speech at the play's beginning is interesting, the situation seems terribly contrived. Also, Patel's and Campos' acting is weak. On the whole, these shows are noble experiments that just don't work out so well. Perhaps a setting in which they could be presented more as a workshop than finished pieces would have better suited the plays.
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