Review: Jane's Journal
Limelight Theatre, 10634 Magnolia Blvd., NoHo, 213-969-2445
by Jeff Nelson
Jane’s Journal, the latest offering at the Limelight Theatre, is a ragged little play that, like some real-life journals, often doesn’t have as much good stuff in it as one would hope. The story of a disaffected young American woman (Merry Shaman) living in London who finds herself pregnant and unsure of the identity of the father, relies heavily on the resolution of this question to keep the audience interested from one scene to the next. And the play’s vague anti-Americanism, expressed in an underdeveloped subplot about the victimization of Jane’s father by a McCarthy-like witch hunt, fails to stir up much excitement. Moreover, a serious discussion of racial issues (one of Jane’s lovers is black, one white) is badly served by a few strident generalizations and an overall lack of passion on the part of the actors.
The principal drama of Jane’s Journal revolves around Jane’s inability to decide between her two lovers—Franklin (Clyde Talley II), a responsible, nurturing, black American who wants to return with Jane to a conventional life in the American Midwest, and Tom (Brian I. Leiter), a misunderstood ne’er-do-well who literally drops in on Jane one night while trying to burgle her building. And although Jane is meant to be portrayed as a breezy, politically committed woman dipping into the waters of sexual liberation, she is played here as a somewhat careless person who has trouble taking responsibility for the mess she makes of her life. Franklin, too, is poorly portrayed, and his many monologues about race and social issues are flat and lack conviction. Only Lester, as the troubled and rebellious Tom, manages to captivate with a sad and sympathetic performance.
Director Kevin Shaw has fashioned from this mish-mash of a play a serviceable production, but much of the drama is lost in the overly energetic staging. Shaw fails at taming the play’s quirky tendency to change gears abruptly between languid lover’s chit-chat and chest-pounding political posturing. And who can explain why actress Shaman had to contend with an ill-fitting pillow stuffed beneath her blouse in the scenes where Jane is supposed to be pregnant? The constant shifting and restuffing of the thing belonged more to a Carol Burnett sketch about Santa Claus than to a serious play about a woman’s sexual life. Unforgivable. ♦