Yellow Moon
Written by David Grieg
Directed by Stuart Carden
Books on Vernon, 664 Vernon, Glencoe (map)
thru Aug 4 | tickets: $60 | more info
Check for half-price tickets
Read entire review
No good reasons
Writers’ Theatre presents
Yellow Moon
Review by Leah A. Zeldes
Everything about Yellow Moon at Writers’ Theatre appeals except one thing. Director Stuart Carden‘s dynamic staging captures your attention. Playwright David Greig‘s juxtaposition of actors from characters to narrators and back is a fascinating technique, and his use of language is lyrical. The cast — Ashleigh LaThrop, Josh Salt, John Lister and Karen Janes Woditsch — do a fine job, especially the latter two, in both their principal roles and as a kind of Greek chorus explaining the action.
Unfortunately, the one thing that doesn’t work is the plot. The premise of this 2006 drama is fine as far as it goes: two young people forced to flee their hometown who wind up at a hunting lodge in Scotland, alone except for its alcoholic keeper. Yet the characters Grieg has peopled with are unlikable and unlikely. Moreover, several of them are mentally ill. Grieg does not treat them in any sympathetic or enlightening way, but just trots out their oddities for no good reason except that he had to write a play about something.
We start with "Stag" Lee MacAlinden (Salt), the swaggering, juvenile-delinquent son of an absent father and a deeply depressed mother (Woditsch) who is so overcome by what we’re told she calls "The Black Dog" that she can’t function at all most of the time. She appears only as a listless, nonspeaking body on stage. Her boyfriend, Billy Logan (Lister), has no interest in her son, but thinks he must take him in hand for her sake, which he does in the most intolerant way, so it’s no wonder Lee lashes out at him.
So far, this could be a hundred other dysfunctional-family plays. It starts to become bizarre with the introduction of Leila Suleiman (LaThrop), a Muslim teenager. Her religion and ethnicity are hardly ever touched on except as a means of making her different from bad boy Lee. She could be Jewish or French or Martian. Leila is enthralled by movie stars and thinks of herself as ugly and unreal. She also refuses to speak, and she cuts herself. Other than that, we’re told, she’s a "good girl" from an affluent family who does just what’s expected of her up till the day she meets Lee and is drawn into his family drama and flight.
She doesn’t have to be, and for all we’re shown on stage, there’s no good reason for her to follow along at such short acquaintance. Lee’s just told her he wants to become a pimp, and yet this "good girl" decides to go off with him? It’s not love at first sight, although it’s obvious that propinquity will lead to that. But Grieg’s view of the mentally ill is that they do self-destructive things for quixotic and inexplicable reasons. Still speechless, Leila goes along at Lee’s "Y’comin?"
On the run north, where Lee hopes to join his long-missing dad, the two encounter Frank (Lister). Frank ultimately turns out to be somebody else, in a coincidence that would be highly unlikely in real life but is entirely predictable in the context of this play. Frank is a drunkard, a fan of the blues and also somewhat perverse. He comes across the two half-frozen teens and gets them to warm up by putting their bare hands inside the freshly gutted carcass of a deer, then he gives Leila a gift of the bloody heart. He takes the kids in, but guessing they’re running from trouble, takes advantage of them by forcing them to do much of his work on the estate.
Assorted other foreseeable things happen among the three of them, but then Holly Malone (Woditsch), a celebrity who is just as mentally disturbed as Leila, turns up. She doesn’t seem to serve much purpose except as a red herring, a means of keeping the relationships between Leila, Lee and Frank from slogging on uninterrupted through their predictable courses to the inevitable, devastating revelation of who Frank actually is.
Rating: ★½
Yellow Moon continues through August 4th at Glencoe’s Books on Vernon, 664 Vernon (map), with performances Tuesdays at 7:30pm, Wednesdays 2 and 7:30pm, Thursdays and Fridays 8pm, Saturdays 4pm and 8pm, Sundays 2pm and 6pm. Tickets are $60, and are available by phone (847-242-6000) or online through PrintTixUSA.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at WritersTheatre.org. (Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes, includes an intermission)
Photos by Michael Brosilow
artists
cast
Ashleigh LaThrop (Leila), Josh Salt (Lee), John Lister (Billy, Frank), Karen Janes Woditsch (Jenni, Holly)
behind the scenes
Stuart Carden (director), Kevin Depinet (scenic designer), Rachel Anne Healy (costume designer), Lee Fiskness (lighting designer), Christopher Kriz (original music and sound designer), Nick Heggestad (properties designer, dialect coach), Rebecca Pechter (stage manager), Michael Brosilow (photos)
13-0463
