Review: Suzanne: A Matter of Sunlight
American Renegade Theatre, 11305 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood, 818-763-4430
by James A. Berg
Some of the many compelling moral questions raised in reaction to the civil unrest of last April are those surrounding the view that violence can be justified if its end result is a good one. Did the uprising of last spring force the system to press harder in its case against Powell, Koon, Wind, and Briseno? What was the relationship between the street violence and the not-guilty verdicts? Was the rioting justified if its consequences are a rebuilding of the inner city and an improved public policy toward the impoverished?
These questions about the merits of using violence as a tool for achieving liberal social change is at the heart of a new play, Suzanne: A Matter of Sunlight, now playing at the American Renegade Theatre. Considering the relevance of these issues to life in Los Angeles today, a play that grapples with them should make fascinating theater. Unfortunately, Suzanne is a confused and garbled work that asks all the wrong questions and leaves one with wholly unsatisfactory answers.
The story concerns Suzanne (Angela Eads), a young artist who kidnaps Ian Peters (William Bassett), the architect whose planned 60-story office tower threatens to cut off the sunlight that streams into Suzanne’s loft. By keeping him chained inside her sculpture, she hopes to demonstrate what life without sunlight is like. The situation is complicated by the arrival of Kim (Sunny Reale), Suzanne’s man-hungry roommate, who develops a romantic interest in the unfortunate architect. From this improbable situation we are supposed to learn about the “responsibilities they have to themselves, each other and to their art.” Instead, we get a morally simplistic tale that seems more motivated by a need to reach a happy ending than by a desire to dig up some truth about these serious themes. We are asked to forgive Suzanne her erratic and psychotic behavior because, well, she’s just having a hard time coping with things. Luckily for her, Ian is more easily moved to forgiveness than we are.
The whole saccharine mess is poorly directed by Cliff Penneman, who has the actors crashing back and forth across the uninspired set, never knowing what to do when they reach the other side. Eads deals with her lack of dramatic motivation by frantically searching for objects she never finds, an action that is irritating and frustrating to watch.
The production is marred by several technical problems, including some inexcusable lighting gaffes. In the end, one can only ask why, in a city crying out for answers to its many problems, can’t theater give us some insight to our everyday lives?♦