REVIEW: Final weekend for Star Bar's "Torture," which really isn't

A couple days ago, a friend asked what I thought about Star Bar Players’ new production, “Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.”

I said, “It was interesting.”

My reply may sound like a polite dodge, but in playwright Christopher Durang’s hands, interesting is a good thing. Not toe-tapping but still, a very good thing.

The 2009 Absurdist comedy is not a ride through Candy Land — especially if you prefer straight forward narratives and next-door-neighbor characters that keep all their fingers. Like a lot of thoughtful contemporary theater, characters in “Torture” are rendered with only a handful of crayons. Through them, the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-nominated playwright take jabs at quite few hot button issues, including terrorism, torture, post 9/11 paranoia, domestic violence, gun culture and, oddly enough, American theater.

As it begins, Felicity (Mathilde Lemoine) wakes up in the bed of a stranger, Zamir (Hossein Forouzandeh). She has no memory of the night or this man, whom she apparently married while in a drunken stupor. Zamir is certainly no gem, a bad man with bad plans and poor impulse control — a guy not so different than her gun-obsessed father (Jack Passanante Jr.).
Felicity’s determination to leave the marriage trips a series of events that take things from bad to prosecutable.

But in one last shot at the pretensions of theater with a capital T, Durang changes the play’s entire trajectory. Feel conflicted by the second act switcheroo? You’re supposed to. It adds up to theater that begs discussion and personal clarification. It’s curious and yes, funny — uncomfortable funny.

Director Jonathan Margheim  is a brave man to take on “Torture,” and he pretty much pulls it off. The first act could use some tightening and the piece is awfully static. All and all, though, his actors make it work.

Alternately, blank-faced and befuddled, Lemoine crafts Felicity as a reasonable and compassionate girl stranded in a world that is neither. Lemoine’s Felicity is sensible to the point of being plodding, a welcome respite from the craziness that roils around her.

Elizabeth Kahn Lanning is flat out stunning as Felicity’s muddled mom. Luella who hides from life in a fog of martinis, perfectly pressed dresses and the fondly remembered legends of Broadway. It’s a rigorous balancing act for Kahn Lanning — maintaining the mask while slowly revealing her character’s complexity. Nevertheless, she delivers.

Similarly, JaNae Stansbery, Greg Lanning and Jack Passanante Jr. walk the microscopic line that Durang draws for his characters in “Torture”: They are cartoons to be sure, but ones supported by a kind of reluctant nuance and humanity. I’ll remember their work here for a long time to come.

Forouzandeh isn’t as successful at conjuring Durang’s alchemy of the real and the caricature. Forouzandeh goes through the motions. Anger. Plotting. Anger. Lust. But he does it from a distance, like a puppet master directing his violent marionette from behind the curtain. I wanted to see something deeper going on underneath the cartoon.

Heather Clark’s costumes are great, as usual. And the Richard Cheese soundtrack, which pops up during the many scene changes, is completely in tune with Durang’s upended sensibility. It’s sort of Wayne Newton meets Rick James — or Guns N’ Roses or Sir Mix A Lot. Fun, telling and very, very smart.
—
Friend Mobley-Martinez at Facebook.com. Talk about theater, art and just about whatever else.