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

Theater reviews

Stage West

Skinless seeks to meld past, present

1/1/2013

0 Comments

 
​Picture a human being completely devoid of skin -- a walking, breathing mass of viscera and bone, something like those anatomical figures you see in science textbooks or on the otherwise sterile walls of doctors’ offices. Skinless’ haunted heroine, Zinnia Wells, writes about these frightening creatures in her novel-in-progress – and she sees them, as alive as the moonless night, in the forest beyond her dysfunctional home.
            This is half the premise of Johnna Adams’ new play, Skinless, now on stage at Moxie Theatre under the direction of Delicia Turner Sonnenberg. The other, dialectical half is a philosophical contretemps between Emmi, a graduate student in women’s studies, and dissertation director Sylvia Diaz. At stake is the definition, and to their way of thinking, the future of feminism. The connective thread is Emmi’s fascination with the late, under-regarded writer Zinnia, around whose life she pines to do her academic research. No dice, says Sylvia, dismissing Zinnia Wells as a forgettable crafter of horror whose immortalizing in a university library would do nothing to further the feminist fight.
            Playwright Adams is an intelligent, prodigious wordsmith, and it’s that talent that compensates for the deficiency in theatricality in Skinless, which finds Zinnia (an otherworldly Jo Anne Glover) reading aloud from her book much of the time. In addition, the office showdowns between Emmi (Anna Rebek) and Sylvia (Rhona Gold) are longer on polemics than on drama, but the questions they raise – about women, about power, about identity – are worthy ones.
            The set is literally divided in two: the bookish university office of the present on the left, the front porch of the house of Zinnia, her sisters and her unseen bedridden mother on the right. Lurking in the darkness of the siblings’ collective imagination are the skinless people. There is no definitive answer as to who they are. One possibility, we learn with the revealing of a horrific family secret, is a shocking one.
            Skinless should rely more on, if not shock value, than on atmosphere and timely silences, each in their way more eloquent than the pages of a novel or the platitudes of academia.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic.

    Archives

    June 2025
    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