Salvage
Presented by Theatre 4 through May 6 at The Gallery at Upcrown Entertainment, 216 Crown St., New Haven. (203) 654-7711, www.t4ct.org.
By George Brant. Directed by Maryna Harrison. Set design by Daniel Nischan. Lighting design by Christopher Hoyt. Sound design by Darlene Richardson. Costume Coordination by Caitlin Headley. Production Stage Manager: Sarah Iannarone. Production Manager: AJ Bilotta. Technical Director: Melissa Mielert. Scenic Painter: Amanda Scott. Performed by Mariah Sage (Kelly), Janie Tamarkin (Roberta) and Rebecka Jones (Amanda).
Theatre 4 has truly created theater 4 itself, commissioning a new play from established Midwestern playwright George Brant that’s tailored to the specific gifts of three of the company’s founding members.
Convincingly set in a present-day “suburban basement” replete with battered old water heater, beaded curtain and stacks of near-molding storage boxes, Salvage is about salvaging reputations, salvaging lives that have stagnated, and salvaging self-respect. The basement is being picked through because a heavy storm is coming (metaphor alert) and because its main occupant—Danny, a 40-year-old record shop employee whose life was seemingly ruined when his high school girlfriend left him—has died in a car accident. Danny’s mother Roberta (Janie Tamarkin, finding the fine line between justifiable high dudgeon and comically overprotective parenting) and sister Kelly (Mariah Sage, charged with demonstrating how Danny’s decades of apathy and despair also shaped the life courses of those around him) are picking through his old record collection and other remnants of his shattered existence when that despised old girlfriend Amanda (Rebecka Jones, whose coolly calculating character neatly offsets the hominess conveyed by Tamarkin and Sage) suddenly turns up.
Amanda, we learn, didn’t just break up with Danny and head off to college. She analyzed the relationship in a bestselling, Oprah-endorsed roman a clef that granted her a decade of West Coast fame and fortune while driving the final blow to Danny’s self-esteem. It appears that there’s an ulterior motive for her return on the day of her long-ago lover’s funeral. It also appears that there are some embittered monologues that Roberta has been waiting half a lifetime to spout, and some unfinished friendship business involving poor, sensitive Kelly.
The machinations of the plot and the endless accusations and recriminations build up to unreal levels, but not enough to scuttle the tender naturalism of the play. This is a drama of turning points and roads not taken, of dwelling in hard emotional places and denying oneself escape
I could see Salvage being played a number of different ways. As directed by Maryna Harrison (who did the vibrant and technically awesome Next Stage production of Mac Wellman’s tigertigertiger at Long Wharf Theatre last year), the piece veers credibly from anguish to amour, from implosions to playfulness. One of the key emotional epiphanies in the play, a physical confrontation between Amanda and Kelly, engenders bursts of laughter that aren’t just of the nervous variety. Likewise, some over-the-top dialogue—Roberta describes Amanda as “a 16-year-old apocalypse” who “ruined my boy,” and likens herself to “a clueless, benevolent prison warden,” yet the delivery and direction mutes such mutterings into something you might actually hear in that realistically mussed-up and lived-in basement.
Salvage ultimately gets too caught up in resolving its plot, the fine points of which are unnecessarily contrived and convoluted. You get tripped up by some weird choices—Kelly sure picked an interesting day, that of her brother’s funeral, to not take her meds; Amanda has a perverse view of what will establish her literary legacy; and it’s hard to tell what Roberta nurses better, her children or the grudges which blame their childhood friends for all their adult problems.
Yet there’s a spark of life is this tale of stunted maturity and fleeting glimpses of salvation. There’s a neat symmetry among the three actors—gentle Mariah Sage, brittle Janie Tamarkin and chilly Rebecka Jones—that has worked similarly well in past Theatre 4 outings. Commissioning a drama for themselves has been a worthwhile and rewarding exercise. The fact that this production is also christening a new downtown performance space—a white-walled, ornate black-box of sorts on the second floor of the LoRicco building on Crown Street—speaks to Theatre 4’s progressive, trailblazing nature. This is an ensemble that knows itself and serves itself well by challenging itself.