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Each little red star is a clickable link to additional information on whatever listing it appears beside. It might be a link to an article in a local newspaper, or it might be a press release the company has sent me.“Sweet Storm”
Posted by Gail M. Burns - January 2010
Sweet is the operative word for Dina Janis’ production of Scott Hudson*’s Sweet Storm in Hubbard Hall’s Freight Depot Theater, although judging from the copious amount of copy written about the play’s development and previous productions, that has not always been the case.
But this production definitely finds the sugary side of Hudson’s work, which is lovingly dedicated to his parents. Remy Bennett and Monroe Robertson play Bo and Ruthie, a newlywed couple spending their wedding night in a tree-house in Florida circa 1960 during a hurricane. As if that weren’t adventure enough to pack in to a mere hour of stage time, Ruthie is paraplegic after a nasty bout with Polio, and Bo, more properly the Reverend Boaz Harrison, is a (very) young evangelical preacher. Both are virgins.
There is everything to like about these two actors, who share enough similarities in their program bios to make me think that they have probably worked together before and who share enough on-stage chemistry that they might even be a couple in real-life. They make these two nervous and heartbreakingly honest young lovers delightful company. I could easily have enjoyed another half hour with them if I hadn’t thought Bennett’s poor Bo would faint from lack of blood-flow to the brain if I kept him from making love to his new wife one second longer.
Unfortunately, Janis, sound designer John Eagle, and the sets-and-props team of Amanda Vorce, Amelia Meath, and Michael Zimmer, let Hudson down from the first moment of the play by pussy-footing politely around its raw and graphic first moments.
The play opens with Bo carrying his bride fireman-style up the ladder into the tree house love nest he has built for their wedding night. This is a complete surprise to Ruthie, as is just about everything that happens in the play. Outside we hear the wind and rain of the approaching storm. Ruthie’s first lines have her crying desperately that she needs to “wee” and that is the first thing we see – Bo helping Ruthie, drenched to the skin and still wearing her wedding dress, to urinate into a basin.
As Janis and company have staged it, the moment was incomprehensible to me until it was over. By the time she had relieved herself and Bo had settled her on the bed, I had figured out that Ruthie didn’t have the use of her legs and what I had just witnessed, but while it was happening I couldn’t make any sense out of it. In fact I cannot believe that the odd contortions Janis put her actors through bear any relation to how a paraplegic is actually assisted to use a bedpan, or anything the playwright intended.
As a card-carrying female who has spent quality time roughing it far from modern plumbing, I can tell you that, even with the use of all your limbs, peeing standing up or squatting is very tricky, particularly if you are wearing pants and/or underpants. This is why our foremothers wore skirts and open-crotched undergarments. Ruthie tells us that she is wearing panties. I would imagine that a young virginal bride from a devout religious background circa 1960 would have been wearing a garter belt and stockings as well on her wedding day. Using a bedpan in a hurry would have been nearly impossible. Nothing about the juxtaposition of Robertson’s body and the proffered basin led me to believe she had peed anywhere but on the bed.
I used the word bedpan, and that is exactly the prop should have been on stage to clue me in visually to what was going on. Sure, I can believe that in a tree house you might pee into a basin, a bucket, a jar, whatever, but these are the crucial first moments of the play, moments that are intended to establish the extent of Ruthie disability and to define her relationship with Bo, and the sight of a plain old enamel wash basin didn’t do it for me.
The other missing clue was the distinctive sound of liquid falling from some height into a metal basin. Sure, that sound would be shocking. That is exactly what Hudson intended.
Ruthie used the basin again later in the show, and again there was no sound effect. Nor in either case did Janis have Bennett move the supposedly full basin with any of the caution one would normally use. Liquid in a wide, flat basin like that, lifted with only one hand, shifts its center of gravity in rather alarming ways if not handled correctly.
I am all for preserving actors’ modesty, but there is no need for any untoward nudity. The point here is that, while Bo and Ruthie are as shy and nervous as any two young virgins on their wedding night, the fact that he is willing and able to help her with the basic necessities means that he has already seen her partially naked and learned, as medical professionals do, to separate desire from practicality. He has married her knowing exactly what being her husband entails, and to skirt that issue, to protect the audience from that reality, is doing the play and these characters a great disservice.
I am sorry to have to dwell so long on such an unusual and generally private topic. That is really the only thing to complain about in this charming production (yes, a play where the leading lady pees twice onstage can be charming). I left the theatre overjoyed to have seen a play about two people who genuinely love each other, treat each other with kindness and respect, and where the Christian faith is presented as a positive, even uplifting, aspect of daily life.
Hudson also treats marriage with great respect. Ruthie in particular has made her vows with her eyes fully open to the challenges that lie ahead, challenges that face every couple and not just ones with physical handicaps who spend their wedding night in a tree house in a hurricane.
In fact, we never learn how that whole “tree house in a hurricane” thing turns out. The play ends as Bo and Ruthie finally prepare to consummate their marriage and the wind picks up ominously. Yeah, there’s danger ahead all right! The question is not so much will they have a long and happy life together as will they survive the night. Hitting the basin when you pee is the least of their worries.
Vorce, Meath, and Zimmer have done a great job with the set which, with the assistance of Pete Carrolan’s lighting, really gives the illusion of being up high in a tree when you can see that it is sitting just a foot or so off of the floor of the performance space.
The actors’ entrance apparently from that foot or so of space between floor and stage was a surprise. Looking at the Freight Depot Theatre building from the outside there is obviously space for some sort of basement, but that is not the sense you have once you are in the building.
I must write about two other detractions from the considerable joys and charms of this production. One is the use of scent as a design element. Bo has filled his tree top love nest with buckets of gardenias. The flowers are obviously fake, but the scent is real although I can’t tell you how it is created. To me it was a pleasant addition to the production, but in my companion it provoked a painful allergic reaction. If you too are sensitive to scent, you will want to avoid this show.
The second problem had to do with access to the theatre itself. I attended an evening performance and therefore could not discern in the dark the nature of the construction work that lay between the theatre and the parking lot, but there was a whole lot of it. There was also a whole lot of black ice. No attempt had been made to distinguish the theatre building from the others in the Freight Yard complex, or to indicate a safe alternative path to it. My companion and I clung to each other and led a hardy band of ticket holders who couldn’t figure out where the theatre was across the frozen tundra.
The Theatre Company of Hubbard Hall’s production of Sweet Storm runs through February 7 in the Freight Depot Theater, located behind the Hall itself, which is on East Main Street (Rt. 372) in Cambridge, NY. The show runs an hour with no intermission and is suitable for ages 13 and up. Tickets are $18 for TCHH season subscribers, $20 for Hubbard Hall members, $24 for non-members, and $15 for students. Tickets may be reserved and purchased by calling (518) 677-2495.
*Hudson is an actor and a member of the LAByrinth Theatre Company. Sweet Storm, his playwriting debut which is dedicated to his parents, was written during that company’s 2004 Summer Intensive. It had a Development Production at New York’s Public Theatre in 2006, and then a successful off-Broadway run in 2008-2009 at The Kirk Theatre, which won Hudson the 2009 Creative Spirit Award.
There is a blog, authored by someone other than Hudson, chronicling this play’s development process.