The campus-wide popularity of the Barnstormers was reaffirmed during their production of The Hand that Cradles the Rock, written by Warren Graves and directed by Xiavian Brown.
The show played last Friday through Sunday in the Swirnow Theater, with the group delivering many lines and quips that elicited a positive reaction from the audience.
The highlight of the play was clearly the performance of the actors, several of whom carried the show and compensated for its rough patches.
The play opens with the character of Ross (senior Mike Wills) irritably tending to a crying baby and doing housework. When his wife Alex (sophomore Keelin Martinek) comes home from a business trip, the show already begins to try too hard.
Unnecessary measures are taken to explain that Alex is the financial boss of the house and that Ross is filling in as "the mother."
For a sizable chunk of the play, Ross is wearing a frilly apron while Alex comes in suited professionally and carrying a briefcase. It is made overtly obvious that Alex has come home with an unsatisfied sexual appetite and is disappointed when Ross ignores her urges.
This situation spawns an argument that is exacerbated by the untimely arrival of Alex's mother Beattie (senior Carol Santoro) and her mother's boyfriend George (senior Gerard Taylor).
While Beattie's relationship with Alex is loving, it can also be extremely biting, and Beattie's relationship to Ross is purely antagonistic. George is also abused by Beattie and expected to be submissive to her domineering and hyper-judgmental nature.
The first half of the play focuses on the relationships between the characters and features many unnecessarily dramatized interactions.
With the exception of Alex and Beattie, none of the characters seem to be able to get along, though Ross and George do exhibit some semblance of bonding. The nature of the dialogue, however, is unrealistically harsh and is used sloppily for comedic effect.
The play also works hard to establish parallels. The relationship between Beattie and George, the dominant woman and the oppressed man, is a not-so-subtle mirror of the conflicts that exist between Alex and Ross.Ross is portrayed as a foolish character, a clown, who doesn't really mind housework.
Similarly, while it is made abundantly clear that Alex is supposed to feel guilty about her career and her unsuppressed desire to escape her "motherly duties," she does not feel this way at all; distance from her family and absorption in her work have precluded any sense of guilt.
The instability of these characters arises from inconsistency between their motivations and their behaviors, a result of confusion in the script.
The play attempts to tackle the issue of gender roles and apply modern conflicts to real world characters, but this cannot be accomplished when the actors are comedians and behave in a laughable manner.
This may on a superficial level, but these jokes detract from the gravity of the characters' concerns. To find a message or morale within this play, therefore, becomes a confusing and reductive exercise.
Despite these issues, the actors were comfortable in their respective roles and behaved consistently.
Carol Santoro offered a foolproof performance as the staunch and strict Beattie, a role supported by such excellent delivery that it drew laughs from simple lines and actions.
Mike Wills, too, carried the play with a dramatic yet comical performance that kept the interest of the audience.
A few technical bumps occasionally distracted the audience from the action of the play.
Following a few drunken dreams in which Nurse Carolyn (senior Nikeya M. Thomas) and Ross are found alone and tempted, the plot spiraled into a confusing mix-up in which Ross and Alex are both suspicious of the other's faithfulness.
This is further complicated when the audience realizes that Ross has confused his night with a novel written by Carolyn, which contains characters that parallel those of the play much too blatantly. Of course, such a technique serves the purpose of highlighting Ross's emotions, but the play depends too highly on parallels to explain theme and motivation to the audience.
There is no satisfactory ending to the play. By the end of the show, no one trusts each other and the plot has become complicated with far too many confusions.
While this allowed for some hilarious situations, including absurd drunken sexual dreams, such scenes are much better suited to a purely comedic show, rather than one in which undertones of gender commentary are meant to resonate.
For all the discrepancies found within script and production, however, the actors delivered an entertaining, crowd-pleasing performance.
