Gang life examined in 'Breath, Boom'

A gang is a lifetime commitment. Once you're initiated, you are in it for life. And if you want to get out, you will be killed, or beaten so badly you will wish you had been. Once you're in, there is no easy escape.

Similarly, once you find your seat for Kia Corthron's play, Breath, Boom, there is no easy escape from the story unfolding in front of you. Her play, now running at the Huntington Theatre Company through Apr. 6, explores gang life, and most specifically, girl gangs. While the script is ambitious and the production daring, the story is ultimately less informative about gang life than it is concerned with intimidating the audience.

While Corthron's dialogue reads like powerful spoken word poetry, the director, Michael John Garc??s, decision to have the actors speak many lines as if they were delivering poems prevents the audience from experiencing the reality of his language.

In other words, since the actors force the lines, they appear more like someone angrily reading a poem from their journal at an open mic night than a theatrical character. For example, the main character, Prix (Kellee Stewart), never waivers from her cold, hard "gangsta" attitude in her tone, even after she has left that world. Thus, the audience is never given a chance to see through her gangsta persona except for some sparse, stilted and somewhat out of place vocal outbursts.

While the acting and direction do more to hinder the audience from taking in the cruel realities of gang life, the technical aspects have the opposite effect. The technical aspects (i.e. set, lights, sound) were certainly the most impressive components of this production.

The agile set, designed by Adam Stockhausen, plays a large a role in bringing the audience into this street life, in turn allowing the audience to take it in as the show progresses. Using literally the same space twice, he creates two completely separate apartments -- one being Prix's room in her house and the other her very own apartment. He effectively contrasts the two living spaces with one being ornate and the other more barren.

Stockhausen also constructs a very detailed prison setting with two floors of bunk beds and a fly-down wall of doors that open and shut automatically. His realistic background gives the audience an immediate feel for the barred existence of its prisoners -- girls entrapped not only in a prison but in a way of life.

The sets give the lighting and the sound designers more than an ample palette for their work, as well. Many times, the three designers work in unison to create a very effective and impacting motion onstage. During the scene changes, sound designer Martin Desjardins chooses a loud and metallic rhythm to accompany the darkened spaces in which people walk on- and offstage bringing props and moving around set pieces.

Lighting designer Kirk Bookman uses a wide variety of gobos (templates with designs cut into them to put the light into shapes) in these scene changes, as well as throughout the production. He uses lights with cage gobos to represent the spaces in which Prix must stay while she awaits the scene changes. Usually, these also signify her entry and exit from prison. In one scene, he uses a side light with a parallel line gobo, which creates the effect of a light shining through a window's blinds. The theme of prison bars was utilized to its full effect throughout this production even when, in this case, they were rotated 90 degrees.

Following along this imprisonment theme, the costume designer, Karen Perry, made an excellent choice to have the run crew dressed in security guard outfits to signify the trappings of Prix's world. This decision was extremely successful when the security guards (run crew) transformed the set from a prison to Prix's apartment and vice versa. At home, she was just as much of a prisoner as she was in prison and to the gang life.

Yet, while the production owes most of its success to some very impressive technical elements, the actors, writer and director should not be entirely discounted. It does take tremendous courage to even write a play on this alarmingly relevant topic, as well as to produce it. Undoubtedly, the play leaves its audience with some very unsettling images and powerful moments, which do not allow the viewer to leave unharmed. Yet, because the story merely glances at the gang life instead of peeling back its skin, the audience finds any easy escape underneath the "exit" sign of the theater.

Breath, Boom is playing at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston thru April 6. Tickets are available by contacting 617-266-0800.