The
Call
Tanya Barfield
 |
| Alexaendrai Bond, Nkechi Emeruwa, Melissa Keith, Darryl V. Jones & Hawlan Ng |
As more and more women delay having their first
babies in order to finish school, pursue careers, and/or trek the world on one
last grand adventure before settling down to parenting, they and their
spouses/partners also face increasing issues of fertility drugs, miscarriages,
and a ticking clock. Many couples turn
to adoption, but with that decision comes a plethora of additional
stress-raising uncertainties. Tanya
Barfield has written a thoughtful play, at times searing with raw emotions,
about a forty-something artist whose career is now on pause as she and her
husband leave behind years of unsuccessfully attempting pregnancy and turn down
the adoption trail with much hope and excitement, doubts and fears. Theatre Rhinoceros presents the West Coast
premiere of The Call where not only
questions surrounding adoption and parenting are tackled but also their entanglements
with issues of race, AIDS, and the first world’s values and reactions to the
hunger, disease, and poverty of the third world.
Annie and Peter are awaiting a phone call to
ensure them their contracted surrogate mother is still on board for a promised
baby, but Annie’s intuition is telling her that the mother is having second
thoughts. After listening to a rather
elongated story by their visiting African-American, lesbian friends, Rebecca
and Drea, about a recent safari mishap while touring Africa, Annie lands on the
idea of helping solve that continent’s AIDS-induced orphan crisis by adopting a
baby from there as her Plan B. When a
possible daughter has been identified and the four friends get together again,
conversation turns with excitement and just a bit of edge of who will be most
qualified to do the little girl’s hair (the “lily white” mother -- said at this
point in jest -- or one of her Black ‘aunties’). Doubts about the efficacy of this decision
pass among the four as more information arrives. The agency locates not a newborn as requested,
but a two-and-a-half-year-old. An
arriving picture in a text shows a girl closer to four or older whose parents
have died. At this point, Annie’s second
thoughts are soaring as she cries that she will miss “seeing her first step,
her first word, her first tooth.” As she
backs further away from being the mother of this suggested child (resulting in
heightening tensions with Peter, who is still all ready to go), she claims
rather selfishly, “I’ll share her with the woman she’ll always wish she knew
... She’ll be my only daughter, but I won’t be her only mother.”
Melissa Keith and Hawlan Ng tackle the roles of
Annie and Peter with sincerity but with uneven results. Part of the issue is that Tanya Barfield’s
script employs a lot of chitchat and everyday, household banter between them
and between them and their friends, especially during the first half of the
play. Sometimes it appears that each of
the two primary actors is just going through the motions of those less-exciting
lines. Ms. Keith slouches and shrugs a
lot and shows low energy. Mr. Ng also
low keys many of his lines to the point of making the ‘slice of life’ comments
totally humdrum. Each steps up to the
plate for more emotional encounters as the play progresses; but even then their
connections and electricity as a couple never seem fully genuine.
Much is the opposite for Nkechi Eneruwa and
Alexaendrai Bond as the coupled lesbians, Rebecca and Drea. Sparks of both mutual attraction and marital
sparring erupt between them on an ongoing basis; and their little jokes and
irritations are seen in the side smiles, frowns, and raised eyebrows they give
each other. Rebecca is a ball of high
energy always with an opinion, a story, and a shoulder to cry on. She also adds a new element to the story in
that her brother and Peter once spent as best friends a year in Africa, where
the brother died. Much has been left
unsaid about the circumstances by her and Peter – that is until the rising
temperatures and tempers surrounding the adoption cause bubbles of the past to
rise to the surface and to burst in several explosions.
Drea tends to push the envelop with her frank
opinions. At one point as Annie is
starry eyed about wanting a baby from Africa, Drea comments dryly, “There are a
helluva lot of Black kids in the U.S. Why
is everyone running to Africa?” That
comment cuts to the quick for the stressed-out Annie, who shoots back, “Why do
no African-American couples adopt in the U.S.
... Blacks don’t adopt.” (And
thus opens in Ms. Barfield’s script a whole new can of worms to
contemplate.) Throughout the play, as
the energy level goes down with just Annie and Peter on stage, it rockets when
either or both Rebecca and Drea appear, with their then bringing out the best
of the former two.
Darryl V. Jones rounds out the cast as a
next-door neighbor, Alemu, originally from Africa. Previously unmet by Annie and Peter, he
starts showing up after he hears about the possible adoption of a baby from his
homeland (of many years prior) continent.
He comes to the door with Bundt cake and then returns with a box of syringes,
shoes, and soccer balls – hoping those all to make it to Africa when his
neighbors go to pick up their daughter-to-be.
Mr. Jones tells one of several long, side stories the playwright inserts
into the script; and while it is unclear its full necessity, his animated, spry
telling is a delight to watch. There is
also deep sadness underneath those otherwise sparkling eyes as he reveals the
difficulties of his own life and the regrets of options not taken. “You get
stuck in life, with your eyes backwards,” he says to Annie. That piece of advice, along with others he
gives Annie (such as the astute observation, “You want a child from Africa, but
you do not what Africa”) is instrumental in a final resolution she reaches.
Jon Wai-keung Lowe has directed this cast with
some mixed but overall successful results in delivering a script that relies
largely on casual, everyday conversations and situations to delve into issues
of infertility; adoption; cultural differences; and underlying racial tensions
as well as worries and inborn assumptions about crippling diseases, family
histories, and third-world legacies in the future. His task is aided by his own clever and agile
set design with walls that move easily to reveal new rooms and settings. Kitty Muntzel adds simple but stunning
costumes that subtly accentuate the themes of Africa and cultural backgrounds. Sean Keehan’s lighting concepts and execution
offer some beautiful touches.
This is a production that will likely strengthen
as days pass beyond Opening Night. My
guess is that the two primary characters will find their way to stronger
performances that will match the three, more minor roles; and the director will
quicken and vary the pace enough to shore up some of the slower parts of the
first half. All in all, Theatre
Rhinoceros is to be congratulated in producing Tanya Barfield’s The Call -- a play that raises a number of very sticky, current questions
related to parenting, race, and views of those very different from us.
Rating: 3 E
Theatre Rhinoceros’s West Coast premiere of The Call continues through March 12,
201at the Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online at http://www.therhino.org.
Photo by David Wilson
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