Unpacking Emotion In Profiles’ 'Annapurna'
By Melody Udell in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 1, 2014 7:00PM
'Annapurna' at Profiles Theatre.
In Sharr White’s intimate two-person play, Annapurna, now receiving its Midwest premiere at Profiles Theatre, a lot is laid bare—from parental guilt to relationship baggage to Chicago actor Darrell W. Cox’s naked ass.
He plays the aptly named Ulysses, a cowboy-type with a once-celebrated career as a poet. But for the last 10 years, Ulysses has been holed up in a derelict trailer high up in the Rockies, spending his copious alone time composing an epic poem and cooking in the buff. His eccentric sanctuary, however, is interrupted by a surprise visit from his ex-wife, Emma (Lia D. Mortensen, in excellent form). Both are equally surprised to see the other: Ulysses didn’t expect to see the wife who left him in the middle of the night 20 years ago with their 5-year-old son in tow, and Emma is shocked to see her former husband living in such self-imposed squalor, hooked up to an oxygen tank and frying sausages in nothing but a loin-cloth-sized apron.
After the shock fades, the rest of White’s 70-minute play involves the unpacking of Ulysses and Emma’s failed relationship, which has moments both comic and heartbreaking. (The show just recently closed on Broadway, starring Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman.) Both Cox and Mortensen are celebrated local actors, and White’s witty and touching dialogue gives them ample room to stretch their characters’ outsize emotions, even though they’re physically contained on Katie-Bell Springmann’s small and appropriately filthy set.
We learn quickly, as Emma begins stocking his shelves with $140 worth of groceries and attacking the trailer with disinfectant, that she has just left her second husband, much in the same way she left Ulysses. And to complicate matters, her adult son, Sam, wants to visit the father he has never met. The two vacillate between comic banter and barbed conversation. Ulysses, a former alcoholic now battling emphysema, can’t remember the night Emma left him, and has spent years pondering his faults and writing unanswered letters to his son. The tension on stage is thick as they reluctantly revisit that night, exposing emotions that—two decades later—still feel raw and unexplored.
Cox and Mortensen have a certain kind of playful chemistry, although it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine that a pants-suit-clad, polished 40-something woman once deeply loved this crotchety, unkempt man before her. But as the layers are peeled away, we see a Ulysses who still has the aura of the truly talented (and even snobby) writer Emma fell for.
Director Eric Burgher’s instinctual, taut direction allows the actors to take the reigns in this character-driven play. And thanks to just the right amount of complexity and mineable emotion—which helps steer the play away from melodrama—Annapurna is a satisfying, fully wrought performance.
The show runs through Sunday, July 20 at Profiles Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway, 773-549-1815 or online.