Backstage Theatre Company's Orange Flower Water Is Good - We Want Great
By Julienne Bilker in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 11, 2010 6:20PM
photo of Shelley Nixon and Jason Huysman by Heath Hays
Generally, we take just a few notes during any given performance so we'll have some points of reference when we sit down to write. If, however, we find ourselves furiously scribbling away, it usually means one of two things: either we hate what we're seeing and are trying to jot down a snarky comment before it escapes us, or specific lines are deeply resonating with us and we want to be sure to remember them. With Backstage Theatre Company's Orange Flower Water, it was the latter. Craig Wright's honest, simple text can sound like unpretentious poetry - we often find ourselves drawn to this guiseless style of writing, so we weren't surprised to end up with more notes than usual. What surprised us was the realization that we felt more connected to the words than to the actors speaking them.
The show's premise is simultaneously juicy and mundane. Beth and David have been married to their respective spouses, Brad and Cathy, for upwards of a decade each, but have spent the last three years of their friendship making out in bathrooms at parties, exchanging glances at their children's soccer games and wishing they could be together. After finally admitting that they've been married to the wrong people for years, they begin having an affair. Director Jessica Hutchinson's capable cast gives solid, mostly understated performances, but "understated" isn't always a good thing. Although the play's catalyzing moments are easily recognizable, the driving force isn't strong enough and a feeling of stasis permeates the room throughout the show. We realize this is partly purposeful - Beth and David may be able to escape their marriages but they can't escape themselves or their baggage - but it needs to be offset with intensity. It also seemed to us that the difficulty of this balancing act was multiplied by the show's staging.
Orange Flower Water is staged in the round, with the set (designed by Jessica Kuehnau and Brandon Wardell) consisting only of a bed on a rotating platform. Whenever a cast member is not in a scene, s/he sits in a chair on the periphery, facing the action. This choice both solves and presents some difficult issues: Although staging everything in essentially one place keeps the show from being mired in furniture, thus keeping up a nice pace, it also limits the actors' ability to take advantage of the space. When Beth (Shelley Nixon) and Brad (Tony Bozzuto) have a blow-up fight, she is constantly forced into sitting on the bed in order to speak to him face-to-face. Nixon does an admirable job keeping her energy up, but her power is diminished by her placement. We were ecstatic when Bozzuto, in the throes of a character-appropriate childlike temper tantrum, jumped on the bed in attempts to release his energy.
The other issue we had is an obvious one: In-the-round performances mean part of the audience is always missing something, and we don't think it works for this play. Blocked from some potentially powerful moments because we couldn't see the actors' faces, we often felt disconnected and suddenly aware of our surroundings. There is one particularly intense scene between Cathy (Maggie Kettering) and David (Jason Huysman) that takes place on the bed - and it needs to - but at the scene's heartbreaking apex, we were staring at Kettering's back. Physical action and emotional despair should have collided with reverberating impact. Instead, the moment was quiet and sad. Yes, it worked - but it could've worked so much better.
Despite frustrations with its unfulfilled potential, we enjoyed Orange Flower Water - and at the very least it's deserving of a larger audience than the handful that attended our performance.
Orange Flower Water, through March 27. Tickets $18-$20 (student/group rates available). Backstage Theatre Company at The Chopin Theatre, 1543 W Division.