"The Egg Play" at The New York International Fringe Festival
“The Egg Play” By Candice Benge Directed by Cara Phipps Reviewed by David Roberts, Chief Critic Theatre Reviews Limited
A scene from one of Heinrich von Kleist’s works fires up the conflicts in Candice Benge’s remarkable “The Egg Play” now playing at The Studio at the Cherry Lane Theatre as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. Scholars describe Kleist as “a Romantic by context, predilection, and temperament [who] subverted clichéd ideas of Romantic longing and themes of nature and innocence and irony, instead taking up subjective emotion and contextual paradox to show individuals in moments of crises and doubt, with both tragic and comic outcomes, but as often as not his dramatic and narrative situations end without resolution.” That’s the meat of “The Egg Story” in a nutshell.
Except: Candice Benge does not mix her metaphors. Emotions broil when Bethany (Gloria McDonald) discovers her husband Robert (Stephen Frothingham) has provided his sperm (his male eggs as it were) for the fertilization of one of their mutual friends (a daughter of sort) Clare’s eggs. All the extended metaphors eggs can be eject from the bodies, psyches, and souls of Bethany (who hates to be called that), Robert, and Clare as they are forced to confront the one story that counterpoints the three stories they each insist are the truth of what happened: who are the fathers of the babies and why did neither come to term? One misstep, one false memory and a doorbell reminds them there will be no exit from their moments of crisis and doubt until they face the facts of what actually happened. Of course, false memory is not always the problem in story-telling. When the doorbell interrupts the trio’s quest for truth (that will “set them free”), Clare (Amelia Van Brunt) realizes that “memory isn’t false just because you didn’t know.”
It is what is known and what is not known that keeps Kath, Robert, and Clare in perpetual storytelling purgatory. Go ask George and Martha (hold that thought) whether the fiction of their lives and the stories they tell one another and strangers to subvert the truth ever successfully create health and wellbeing in life and relationship. They know, as do the characters in “The Egg Story” that humans will stay stuck (somewhere) until the truth of their lives wins out.
It would be interesting to know whether Ms. Benge had Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” in mind when writing “The Egg Story” (re-enter George and Martha from above) although as the characters here often repeat, “It doesn’t matter.” But the themes of honesty and truth and the pain of confronting that truth (whether it’s Benge’s ‘egg’ or Albee’s ‘baby’) resonate in both.
What we do know is that this director powerfully directs this capable cast of three in a journey through the mazes of truth, falsehood, memory, and emotion which connects with the journeys of everyone who has the pleasure to see this well-crafted play.
Gloria McDonald, Stephen Frothingham, and Amelia Van Brunt unselfishly share their finely honed craft to bring the audience, at last, to the wall where once sat one of the most famous of all eggs Humpty Dumpty (though not an egg in all versions of the nursery rhyme). And unless truth does win out over dissemblance, there will be a fall and a brokenness that no one can “put together again.” Have Bethany, Robert, and Clare been forthright enough to escape the consequences of such a fall (think the Fall)? Or, as Kleist would suggest, will this conflict end without resolution? See this distinguished play to find out before it heads off to Chicago.
THE EGG PLAY
Presented by Transient Theater and The New York International Fringe Festival. Written by Candice Benge. Directed by Cara Phipps. Technical direction by Stormy Pyeatte; sound design by Marlon Meikle.
WITH: Stephen Frothingham (Robert), Gloria McDonald (Bethany), and Amelia Van Brunt (Clare).
All performances take place at The Studio at Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street (7th Avenue and Hudson Street) in New York, NY. Tickets are available at www.fringenyc.org or 866-468-7619. $15 in advance, $18 at the door. Senior and Fringe Junior tickets available at the door for $10. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes with no intermission.
Remaining Show Dates Tuesday, August 14th @ 5:15 pm Wednesday, August 15th @ 8:45 pm Thursday, August 16th @ 6:45 pm
Permalink | Posted by David Roberts on Tuesday, August 14, 2012
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