by Florangela Davila
\nCrosscut.com<\/p>\n
Azeotrope\u2019s \u201c25 Saints\u201d is grim and brutal\u00a0<\/strong>and it packs a mean whack to the gut. I should tell you I saw this production, the Seattle premiere of the Joshua Rollins play, some 30 hours after learning about something violent that happened to someone in my own world. So I found myself particularly squirmy and eye-averse during the last violently gripping minutes of the play.<\/p>\n Then again, Azeotrope, in what it chooses to produce, wants to prod all of us towards humanity\u2019s underbelly. With \u201c25 Saints,\u201d it shoves us into the desperation of meth makers in Appalachia and their thirst for a life that isn\u2019t \u201cmountains and gravel roads. Wal-Marts and trailers.\u201d<\/p>\n The play is set in a cabin. It\u2019s dingy and trashed. It\u2019s got a sheet as a window shade. It\u2019s also got a large oak trunk. That\u2019s the trunk where Charlie (Tim Gouran) and Tuck (Richard Nguyen Sloniker), both 20somethings, end up stuffing a gunshot-wounded Deputy Vance in the opening scene.\u00a0That is, before Charlie grabs a hammer and pounds the pulpy Deputy in the head.<\/p>\n Charlie and Tuck have good reason for wanting to kill the guy. We learn why early on. But before they get rid of the body, and before they head out to their notion of paradise (Virginia Beach. Sand; pi\u00f1a coladas), they have to scrub out the blood in the carpet, Hefty bag a bloody sheet. And they\u2019ve also got to cook up a batch of meth.<\/p>\n Charlie\u2019s got a debt to pay off \u2014\u00a0a mess left behind by his younger brother. (Now gone). He\u2019s also heart-heavy for the girlfriend named Sammy (Libby Barnard) that the brother also left behind. Charlie\u2019s come back to dirt-poor Appalachia. His intended future had been college. Now he\u2019s got 30 hours to make meth with his brother\u2019s partner, Tuck. And he\u2019s screaming at Tuck. Twitchy Tuck. Tuck who chomps on Sour Cream and Onion Pringles and thinks it\u2019s OK when a piece of Pringle falls into a pot of about-to-be meth.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s something else out there. Come on, man\u2026We can make our own way,\u201d Charlie begs Tuck. It\u2019s\u00a0so\u00a0close. Freedom. Something better. Those pi\u00f1a coladas. And you\u2019re sucked in because the performances by Gouran and Nguyen Slonicker are spot-on potent and anguished. Their screaming, their frustration, their bond is believable. We\u2019re with them in this WTF reality, the guys on the crappy couch and Sammy, the girlfriend, who\u2019s in a zombie state until she\u2019s achingly wistful and then, she and things get unleashed. In a horrible way.<\/p>\n After watching a different Azeotrope production the week prior (\u201cRed Light Winter\u201d by Adam Rapp, which Azeotrope is doing in repertory with \u201c25 Saints\u201d as part of The Central Heating Lab at ACT), an usher asked me afterwards, \u201cWas it entertaining?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUh, no,\u201d I stammered.<\/p>\n Like \u201c25 Saints,\u201d it was heavy and sad with rousing moments that had nothing to do with “Red Light Winter’s” full-frontal nudity (male and female) and more with the fact that, again, a somewhat seedy story emerges as something unflinchingly real.<\/p>\n That\u2019s credit to director Desdemona Chiang\u00a0<\/strong>who, with Azeotrope co-founder Nguyen Sloniker, has the nerve to choose material that jabs at our insides.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve seen Nguyen Sloniker several times (Azeotrope\u2019s \u201cJesus Hopped the A Train;\u201d and \u201cGruesome Playground Injuries;\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u201cBoeing Boeing\u201d at The Seattle Rep) and he\u2019s always so so good, whether he\u2019s being desperate or vulnerable or full of swagger. In \u201c25 Saints,\u201d he\u2019s lost and frantic and soft. Even messed up people crave human connection and he finds it, ever so briefly, with a meth-addicted pizza delivery driver named Sasha (Mariel Neto, who knows how to do crazed, beat-up, tweaked-out so well).<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a calculatedly vicious sheriff (James Lapan, who plays him with just the right amount of toughness).\u00a0\u00a0His partner Miss Duffy (Mary Murfin Bayley) is the least satisfying, never coming across as bitchy enough or even remotely menacing \u2014 even with a shotgun in her hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Azeotrope’s new production at ACT will hit you in the gut. Which is exactly why you must go. by Florangela Davila Crosscut.com Azeotrope\u2019s \u201c25 Saints\u201d is grim and brutal\u00a0and it packs a mean whack to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[18,41,24],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-press","tag-25-saints","tag-crosscut-com","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.azotheatre.dreamhosters.com\/az\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}