Love and Understanding
Written by Joe Penhall
Directed by Jaclynn Jutting
at Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr (map)
thru March 24 | tickets: $15-$20 | more info
Check for half-price tickets
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Outstanding performances, sharp direction makes this worth the ride
Redtwist’s More Red Series presents
Love and Understanding
Review by Kat Hey
Some may look back at the 90’s as the “boom era” for dot.coms and IPO’s. It was the time when the president of the United States was impeached for a perceived moral slip while moral standards were becoming more hypocritical. The power balance went to those who worked hard to be the face of the new prosperity and morality.
Neal (Joel Reitsma) and Rachel (Stella Martin) have built a life for the new age. They are both doctors and working 100-hour weeks to be the very best in the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s austerity and nationalized health. Neal and Rachel have a mortgage and shared ambition. They are on their way – until the past drops in on them.
Ritchie (Michael Woods) is that character who busked around playing at hip journalism, interviewing Sandinistas and laying as many women as he could. Or that is what he would have us believe. Woods does an astounding job as the damaged soul. He is thin and haunted looking, with deep-set eyes that at one moment betray pain and in the next serve as a chapter from “Trainspotting”. Woods exudes jumpy energy and a con man’s charm for this role.
It’s infuriating and mesmerizing to watch the dynamic of all three characters. Reitsma is very much the buttoned tight English doctor who cares deeply about his friend and cannot bring himself to say no. The beginning is darkly comic because Reitsma plays Neal as slightly dithered and the fall guy in Ritchie’s slapstick melodrama. The characters were best blokes back in the day. Ritchie always had the upper hand and was devilish. Neal was the serious one and mostly the victim of Ritchie’s pranks and lies. The Hippocratic oath does nothing to protect him or Rachel from devastation and humiliation.
Martin plays her character as deceptively passive. Rachel wants to be laid back and is not willing to speak her mind to Neal. Ritchie arrives when they are both exhausted and at a tenuous point in their relationship. It literally kept me on the edge of my seat with fury to watch Woods spin yarns of his adventures and be so charming. He casually mentions that he hit his now ex-girlfriend and laughs that ‘she didn’t like it in a way that seems rakish and worthy of overlooking. He casually asks Neal for a shot of morphine as if it were a glass of whiskey. Ritchie shakes their lives to the breaking point and then acts to save Neal’s skin in a way that borders on the criminal. He wears Rachel down with his plaintive tales of loneliness and bad bar jokes. I wanted to shake her character and make her see that he’ playing her.
Woods comes out of the gate at such a level that one wonders whether they all can maintain the momentum for the second act. It ratchets up even higher. All three characters circle each other, warily wanting something from the other. Neal wants Ritchie’s sense of entitlement and fecklessness. Rachel wants to feel free from entanglements of what her medical career is destined to be – caring for people who want to be cured when there never will be a cure for self-neglect and abuse. Ritchie wants Neal’s material life and his woman without all of the work and responsibility.
The climax is not in just one moment or scene of this production. It is carefully meted out over several scenes. Even the denouement is psychological white-knuckle ride. There is love and understanding as a given, but will there ever be forgiveness?. I highly recommend this show. The acting is outstanding. Jaclynn Jutting’s direction by is sharp and brilliantly staged. This show made me laugh through gritted teeth with a satisfying and realistic conclusion.
Rating: ★★★½
Love and Understanding continues through March 24th at Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr (map), with performances Saturdays at 3pm, Sundays and Mondays at 7:30pm. Tickets are $15-$20, and are available by phone (773-728-7529) or online through BuzzOnStage.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at Redtwist.org. (Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes, includes an intermission)
Photos by an Jan Ellen Graves
artists
cast
Stella Martin (Rachel), Joel Reitsma (Neal), Michael Woods (Ritchie)
behind the scenes
Jaclynn Jutting (director), Olivia Leah Baker (costume design), Michael Colucci (producer), Nick Gajary (sound design), Megan Gallagher (stage manager), Jan Ellen Graves (graphic design, marketing, producer, photos), Keenan R. Minogue (set piece design and construction), Jessie Chappe (casting director), Eric Vigo (lighting design), Charles Bonilla (box office manager), E. Malcolm Martinez (box office associate), John Garcia (associate producer, box office associate)
14-0303
