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| Tom Alan Robbins and Cory Michael Smith in The Whale. Photo by Terry Shapiro. |
WHAT: The Whale
WHERE: Ricketson Theatre, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, 1050 13th Street, Denver
WHEN: 6:30 p.m. Tuesdays to Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Fridays, 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays and 1:30 p.m. Sundays through Feb 19
COST: $47.00 to $57.00
Even as a (part-time) theater critic, I rarely get to see the world premiere of a major new play. Fortunately, I live just an hour and a half from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which is a hotbed for new play development. And last Thursday I saw a new drama by Samuel D. Hunter which reminded me why I go to the theatre: to be entertained, of course, but more importantly, to experience life more fully and to connect with people different than me.
The play is The Whale, a deceptively simple story about a man named Charlie. Charlie is slowly killing himself. Not through drugs or alcohol, but through food. Charlie, you see, is morbidly obese.
"I haven't been able to weigh myself in years," Charlie replies when asked how much he weighs. "Five-fifty? Six hundred?"
His friend Liz, a registered nurse, has had it. She threatens to send him to an emergency room, but he refuses to go. He has no health insurance. And besides, he's saving all his money to give to his daughter Ellie when he dies. A daughter that he hasn't seen since he left her mother for his gay lover 15 years ago. A daughter that now hates the very idea of him.
But when Charlie finally cajoles her into visiting him--it takes a hefty bribe to do it--he discovers that the hatred she so lovingly feeds is not directed only at him. It's directed at the world and everyone in it. And so Charlie, who makes a living as an online literature instructor, tries to break through the only way he knows how. He has her start a journal.
"Just write what you feel," he tells Ellie. "It won't be boring if it's honest."
It's that search for honesty that drives the story. Everyone is hiding something, it turns out, even Charlie. And as the characters discover, it's only in dropping their facades that they can hope to make any connection worth having with the people in their lives.
It is a funny play, very funny at times. But it's not always an easy play to watch, not with so much hatred and invective spewed from every side. And these aren't easy people to like. Still, you can't tear your eyes from them, glimmering as they do with a rare and almost noble authenticity.
There are mysteries as well, so subtly done that you don't even realize you don't know the answers until you do. What does Charlie see in the missionary? Why does the missionary work alone? And why does Charlie insist on having a particular essay read to him--an essay even he admits isn't very good--every time his heart threatens to quit.
Moby Dick makes its appearance, as does the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale. But these never get heavy-handed or pedantic. Instead, they add layers of meaning to a story already brimming with it.
Charlie is brought to life by Tom Alan Robbins, a study in contrasts who shows emotional dexterity while making us feel the burden of his weight with with every lumbering step. Cory Michael Smith's gawky Elder Thomas bristles with nervous energy. And Nicole Rodenberg as Ellie may have the hardest task of all, making her snotty high school senior not just funny but charmingly so.
The technical highlights include Jason Simms' set, a cramped, nondescript apartment that acts as a treasure chest of details, from the empty soda boxes piled high in the kitchen to the pizza boxes jammed under the sofa to the mysterious stains soiling the well-worn carpet. William Burns' whalelike calls create a haunting link between the often brief scenes.
And can someone please give Kevin Copenhaver an award for constructing that amazingly fluid and lifelike fat suit?
Yes, pain can be a wall that keeps people apart. But The Whale is a powerful reminder that if we would only be honest about it, pain can also bind people together.
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