By Kevin Hylton
June 17, 2003
DEFENDING THE DANCE
A Review of RAIN DANCE (starring Harris Yulin and James Van Der Beek)
There’s no arguing one thing. Playwrights live at least two lives. There’s the life they lead where they call home and there’s the life that somehow leaks onto the page and eventually transforms into a play. Which one is real? Are they both? Is the play a reflection of the life the writer wished she lead? Could it be a complete work of fiction? Whatever the play is, if it is any good, I’d like to think that it comes from some basic human truth that lies somewhere deep in the souls of just about every human being. It is some sort of emotion that begs to explode from the deepest darkest place in the playwright. In some instances, a complex plot may expose that human truth. In other examples, it may be the situation or one character that makes us think about our lives just a little differently.
I had no plans to write this article. After seeing Lanford Wilson’s most recent play, RAIN DANCE, and conducting an interview with the play’s star, James Van Der Beek, I felt pretty convinced that the play was going to be showered with accolades from New York’s critics. I had a feeling that it would become one of the hottest off Broadway tickets for the month of June. I was wrong. The show’s reviews ran hot and cold. But, if you look back at the reviews, you’ll see a common thread between all of them. It is because of this commonality that this article exists.
Aside from the critic at the online website Theatermania, almost everyone criticized Wilson’s script. While some complained that Van Der Beek’s performance was somewhat juvenile, the biggest criticism was that Wilson failed to properly deal with what the critics saw as the play’s central topic. RAIN DANCE takes place one night in Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1945. It tells the story of four very different people who are all involved in the creation and the detonation of the Atomic Bomb. Several critics felt that too little actually transpires in the play and that for a “nuclear play” there were no explosions.
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When I read these reviews I became nervous. Hollywood has always been worried about plot and a big bang. Explosions sell tickets. Producers and studios require that action continuously occur in their films and when it doesn’t the camera moves to create some action. Since the 1970’s ended and film backed away from its character driven renaissance, theater became one of the few legitimate venues for a writer to tell a story about people. Theater audiences expect to sit and watch people’s lives unfold slowly and without explosions. Theater has always been there to open eyes. This can be accomplished in many ways. Complicated plots are one option. But while such devices may create intrigue, fundamentally, what touches people seems to be truth. When we begin to worry that a play does not have enough twists and turns we are forcing truth to ride in the trunk of the car. Years ago a soft-spoken Texan named Horton Foote wrote a little play called, THE MAN FROM ATLANTA. It won a Pulitzer Prize for the playwright. It did well on Broadway. It told a story of real people struggling in their real lives. It did not deal with an cataclysmic topic and it did not employ a storyline with constant twists and turns and yet it is as destructive as any play I’ve ever witnessed.
Lanford Wilson’s RAIN DANCE does not have the outward, visceral nature of earlier works such as BURN THIS. It does not capture the anger and pain of a generation as the playwright did in FIFTH OF JULY. Nevertheless, at the end of this hour and a half play, Wilson has clearly unleashed a mushroom cloud. RAIN DANCE destroys its audiences through careful examination of the lives impacted by the creation of the bomb in Los Alamos and by it’s detonation around the world. It is perhaps the most poignant theatrical event in New York this year. The play looks at the costs of war and the difficult decisions that nations and individuals must make and considers how we deal with them.
As for the acting in this play, Van Der Beek’s performance is remarkable. The actor portrays a man who, like any of us, is driven by his own desire for success and pained by the costs that accompany the attainment of his goal. I saw Van Der Beek in the preview period and, despite his quick switch from television to stage, I found him to be an exceptional presence.
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Van Der Beek is flanked by the steady performances of Randolph Mantooth, who plays a Native American Military Policeman, and Suzanne Regan, playing a scientist’s wife Irene. Regan is clearly the most comfortable with the script, having performed in the original Purple Rose production in Michigan. Harris Yulin, a veteran of stage and film who recently performed in the highly lauded Broadway production of HEDDA GABBLER, is at the top of his game as the scientist Peter.
Aside from the solid acting, crafted direction by Guy Sanville, and Wilson’s developed script, I found the set to be especially interesting. Christine Jones, who has worked on several previous Signature Theatre productions, created a sparse, very realistic set for the play. RAIN DANCE takes place in a cantina and the set is constructed to look like an industrial cookie-cutter facility. The set is based on the actual whitewashed buildings put up by the U.S. government in Los Alamos during the testing phase and the set is unusual in the fact that the interior of this cantina is almost fully covered with a roof. This makes for challenges both with respects to lighting and sound. Nevertheless, Kurt Kellenberger’s sound design allows for successful transmission of Wilson’s lines and sets the mood nicely with periods of raging rain and thunder. As well, James Vermeulen, who recently did the lighting for FIFTH OF JULY and Neil LaBute’s THE MERCY SEAT, created an exceptional lighting design that makes one feel as if you are seeking shelter in a small building in New Mexico’s desert.
RAIN DANCE succeeds because it is able to extract basic human emotion and truths from a situation that is completely incomprehensible. Was it wrong to build and drop the bomb? Can one justify the destruction of one life to save ten? Maybe the answer is that sometimes in life there are no answers. Sometimes there are only questions.
Act fast since RAIN DANCE closes on June 29, 2003. Tickets can be obtained by calling (212) 244-PLAY or through the theatre’s website at www.signaturetheatre.org.
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