In "Body Awareness," deep social issues are combined with witty instances of humor as four characters struggle for connection and communication.
The play is one of three plays that make a part of playwright Anne Baker's "Shirley, VT Plays" festival, along with "Circle Mirror Transformation" and "The Aliens," put on by SpeakEasy Stage Company.
In "Body Awareness," Baker once again takes us to the charming, fictional town of Shirley, Vt. This time, strong and independent feminist and lesbian Phyllis (Adrianne Krstansky) is hosting "Body Awareness Week" at the local college where she teaches.
Conflict ensues as Phyllis and her partner Joyce (Paula Plum) are forced to deal with Joyce's socially unstable 21−year−old son, Jared (Gregory Pember), as well as their houseguest Frank (Richard Snee), whom everyone has mixed opinions about.
The play, which is directed by Paul Daigneault, is a glimpse of how three members of a seemingly stable household and a temporary guest grapple with deep issues of disparity, love and social disconnection.
The situation is convincing and real, complete with awkward silences, simple silences that occur as characters go about daily, mundane activities and long, dialogue−intensive scenes. It is through the moments of conversation, as well as through moments of silence, that Baker delicately develops each of her complex characters.
The audience is drawn into the set — a charming little home on the stage, complete with a tiny, cozy kitchen, a humongous bookshelf and a bedroom. In the far right corner, a blackboard stands alone. The set remains the same throughout the production, but the creative use of lighting facilitates the possibility of events taking place in the kitchen, in the bedroom and even in Shirley State College, where "Body Awareness Week" is taking place.
The play starts as "Body Awareness Week" begins, where boastful and secure Phyllis is first seen delivering a small speech about the event in front of the blackboard. Simultaneously, a conversation between Joyce and her son Jared in the kitchen expose the first instance of a recurring disconnection between all characters throughout the play. Both Joyce and Phyllis try to label Jared's lack of empathy as Asperger's syndrome but then wonder whether his problem may be a lack of male presence in his life or a disability to adequately communicate his feelings and social desires.
Although Baker touches on deep emotional subjects, she expertly sugarcoats even the saddest emotional moments with humorous and original characters such as Jared. Jared works at McDonald's, but his unhealthy obsession with the Oxford English Dictionary inspires him to pursue the career path of a lexicographer.
His expertise on dictionaries seems to undermine his ability to read social signals, though. Jared feels superiorly smart and blames his anger on being surrounded by imbeciles, but his real anger stems from the fact that he is hopelessly misunderstood by everyone around him.
In all three of her "Shirley, VT Plays," Annie Baker includes a teenager who is on the verge of growing up. She considers the teenage years to be simultaneously fascinating and horrible.
Phyllis and Joyce agree to host one of the entertainers for the week, Frank, who quickly becomes a catalyst of bottled−up tribulations that the family had been refusing to confront.
As Joyce's admiration for Frank intensifies, Phyllis becomes jealous and increasingly hateful toward him and his art of photographing nude women, including girls and old women. Phyllis is angered by his presence both in her home and in "Body Awareness Week." But the anger is simply a way for her to hide the fact that she is jealous. In reality, Frank makes her feel insecure, which she attempts to hide by claiming that his work is a scam: an excuse to be a pervert.
But Frank plays an important role in the play, as his presence forces the members of the household to connect in ways they have never done so before. Despite his questionable art form, Frank is jovial, funny, confident and extremely hard to dislike. Frank proves to be the male figure that Jared was missing, as the two adults engage in a hilarious and heart−warming conversation about sex. However, Frank also endangers Joyce's relationship with Phyllis when she agrees to be photographed nude by him.
While the play stays true to Baker's ability of showcasing believable characters with real emotions, it somehow fails to dazzle. Furthermore, the production does not really offer a conclusion or a sense of finality, but perhaps this is intentional because human life, which is what she tries to recreate in her plays, is full of inconclusiveness.
