STAGE WEST
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page

Theater reviews

Stage West

"Actually" at San Diego Repertory Theatre

10/24/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
DeLeon Dallas and Emily Shain in "Actually."                                                             Photo by Jim Carmody
            Amber (Emily Shain) and Tom (DeLeon Dallas) are freshmen at Princeton. Once Tom recognizes that Amber’s been eyeing him from afar, they share a flirty meet-cute followed by an innocent-enough first “date” at an ice cream joint. But when a subsequent rendezvous ends up in Tom’s dormitory bed, matters take a grave turn. What happened there depends on who you believe later, when Amber and Tom wind up at a disciplinary hearing over the question of whether he raped her. Amber says yes. Tom says no.
            This is Anna Ziegler’s one-act drama Actually. The title echoes the word Amber spoke in mid-sexual encounter, one not shown to the audience onstage, to let Tom know that she’d changed her mind about the whole thing. Tom heard the word, he says, but didn’t take “actually” as a “no.”
            With Brett Kavanaugh’s and Christine Blasey Ford’s testimonies still fresh, Actually’s “he said/she said” narrative couldn’t be more timely. San Diego Repertory Theatre’s production of Ziegler’s 2017 play is tense and frank. Most of the 90 minutes is presented in twin monologues, with Shain’s stricken, stammering Amber recounting events before and leading up to the night in the dormitory, and Dallas’ overly confident yet anguished Tom doing the same. Both dwell heavily in each character’s excessive backstories: Amber has body issues and a mother who disses her, and she’s given the implied complications of her Jewish faith; Tom is an African-American at a predominantly white Ivy League school, his best male friend keeps trying to kiss him, and it will turn out his beloved mother is very ill. Possibly these looming circumstances are designed to explain both Amber’s and Tom’s distraction and lack of judgment (along with just being college freshmen), but Actually’s is a very busy script.
            Presented on a stage bare but for two chairs, the actors openly confront themselves, and the life-changing seriousness of their situation. When they do clash, the play finds its passion, having occupied itself too much before then in name-drops of Kierkegaard and Nabokov or, less sublime, in references to kegs and Jello shooters. Actually has a verdict, but, as in the reality of the times, no clear reconciliation between truth and conscience. (Review originally published in San Diego CityBeat on 10/24/18.)
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic.

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    August 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    January 2013
    January 2012
    January 2011

    Categories

    All
    Theatre Review

David Coddon

About 
David Coddon Fiction
Theatre Reviews

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page