{"id":223,"date":"2013-10-30T17:17:26","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T17:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/?p=223"},"modified":"2013-10-31T18:56:37","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T18:56:37","slug":"blog-critics-theater-review-seattle-25-saints-and-red-light-winter-by-azeotrope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/?p=223","title":{"rendered":"Blog Critics: Theater Review (Seattle): \u201925 Saints\u2019 and \u2018Red Light Winter\u2019 by Azeotrope"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Dusty Somers<\/a>
\nBlog Critics<\/b><\/p>\n

One of Seattle\u2019s most exciting theater companies, Azeotrope, has launched what might be its most ambitious project yet, staging two emotionally exhausting plays in repertory \u2014 same space, same director, same cast. The two works, Joshua Rollins\u2019s 25 Saints and Adam Rapp\u2019s Red Light Winter, are nearly perfectly complementary pieces. Both examine people isolated by their own feelings, grasping desperately for human connection. One follows its tightly wound narrative to a logically explosive conclusion while the other burns out, evaporating in a puff of smoke. Deep conviction and commitment define Azeotrope\u2019s productions of both \u2014 whatever shortcomings either of these works may have, they hardly seem germane when confronted with such sustained passion.<\/p>\n

25 Saints, a brisk no-intermission 90 minutes set in a West Virginia hovel, opens with blood and fury and movement, and rarely lets up, pausing only to shift into bouts of emotional carnage instead. Meth cooks Charlie (Tim Gouran) and Tuck (Richard Nguyen Sloniker) are on the verge of fulfilling a debt to the town\u2019s crooked sheriff (James Lapan) and escaping to Virginia Beach with Sammy (Libby Barnard), but a dead deputy throws a wrench into the proceedings.<\/p>\n

Gouran\u2019s sensitive, heavyhearted performance is remarkable. Charlie is a man who\u2019s assumed the bulk of responsibility left behind by his deadbeat, disappeared brother. The meth debt was his, and so was Sammy, and Charlie is determined to make both right, even if his romantic inclinations aren\u2019t exactly reciprocated.<\/p>\n

25 Saints avoids deadweight for the most part; we get glimpses of the town\u2019s rampant, systemic sickness courtesy of the sheriff\u2019s heavy Duffy (Mary Murfin Bayley) and pizza delivery driver\/meth-head Sasha (Mariel Neto), but the play\u2019s core is Charlie and Sasha, a relationship borne out of desperation that just might be able to withstand the coming horror. The whole thing proceeds down an inevitable, familiar American Gothic path, but with Desdemona Chiang\u2019s focused direction, the play\u2019s unrelenting fatalism is gripping.<\/p>\n

Also on the docket is Red Light Winter, which Azeotrope produced back in 2010 as its inaugural production. The same three-person cast has returned, and is in top form for this bleak chamber piece, sometimes cuttingly hilarious but more often overwhelmingly gloomy.<\/p>\n

Former college buddies Matt (Sloniker) and Davis (Gouran) are on vacation in Amsterdam, where the terminally uncomfortable Matt has holed himself up in the hotel room, contemplating suicide, while the substantially more gregarious Davis has been out sampling the city\u2019s pleasures. Davis brings a French prostitute, Christina (Neto), back for Matt, in hopes of jumpstarting the sad-sack\u2019s libido and, consequently, his happiness. The three hang out for a bit, and Matt describes the play he\u2019s writing, Christina sings a number she wrote in her cabaret days, and Davis brags about his superior taste and success as a hotshot book editor.<\/p>\n

And then, things shift. Christina isn\u2019t exactly who she says she is. Matt\u2019s crippling relational apathy (how else would he still be friends with a boor like Davis?) begins to be replaced with a kind of fixation that might be a lot more dangerous. Just how dangerous? We start to see the signs in Act Two when Christina shows up at his apartment in New York by accident a year later.<\/p>\n

The unfortunately schematic nature of Rapp\u2019s play reveals itself in the second act as Matt\u2019s longing for Christina and Christina\u2019s longing for Davis follow one another in a carousel of loneliness that\u2019s a little too neatly defined. Still, this is an extremely affecting play when measured by its emotional awareness, and it makes for a stunning actors\u2019 showcase.<\/p>\n

Sloniker seems to have internalized a lifetime of disappointment and unfulfilled potential for his quietly devastating portrait of Matt. Neto is seductive and mysterious until all that artifice is torn away and all that remains is a vulnerable, exposed husk of a human being. Gouran, in a complete reversal of his 25 Saints turn, is gleefully obnoxious and unrepentantly nihilistic. There\u2019s little humanity to be found in his character, but his performance is appealingly well-rounded nonetheless.<\/p>\n

Catherine Cornell\u2019s scenic design is seedily evocative in the run-down cabin of 25 Saints and appropriately spartan in both halves of Red Light Winter. Andrew D. Smith\u2019s lighting and Evan Mosher\u2019s sound design help transform ACT\u2019s black-box Eulalie Scandiuzzi space into convincing recreations of a West Virginia forest and a glowing, bustling red light district.<\/p>\n

Azeotrope has posited itself as an ambitious company and this repertory doubleheader does nothing to contradict that claim. The shows run through Nov. 24 at ACT Theatre. A performance schedule and tickets are available online.<\/p>\n

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Theater Review (Seattle): ’25 Saints’ and ‘Red Light Winter’ by Azeotrope<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n