STAGE WEST: Loud Fridge Theatre Group's "We Lovers"

Left to right: Lester Isariuz, Kailey Agpaoa. Kandace Crystal and William "BJ" Robinson in "We Lovers." Photo by Liliana Talwatte

            Christian St. Croix’s “We Lovers” is a less a play and more a melding of four spoken-word performances. Those words are musing, evocative of both human beings and magical beings. Its reflections are sometimes dreamy, other times practically fatalistic. This was its appeal a year ago when a 50-minute version of “We Lovers” was staged during the San Diego International Fringe Festival.
            That’s the appeal now of “We Lovers,” fleshed out to 90 or so minutes for a Loud Fridge Theatre Group production directed by Kate Rose Reynolds at the Light Box Theatre in Liberty Station.
            St. Croix’s particular gift is one for language. Working within the structure of drama, he is a poet down to his soul. There is searching in his explorations of real life and of fantasy, seen not only in “We Lovers” but before that in works including “We Are the Forgotten Beasts” and “Monsters of the American Cinema.”
            Truthfully, this demands patience and acute listening, and certainly so with “We Lovers.” Of the four stories told in the woods by the locals who gather there on a regular basis for just that purpose, only one of them – the tale of a “Lakeside Slasher” that would go nicely with any spooky night around a campfire – is what you’d call straightforward. The others, recalling encounters with supernatural beings and preoccupied with love and danger, are internalized and poetical.
            The first-timer at the “We Lovers” storytelling rendezvous is a young man with a newly blackened eye (courtesy of an abusive father, we learn). He is encouraged by the others – Little Bit (William “BJ” Robinson), Wolf and Bird (Kandace Crystal) and Doctor Sister (Kailey Agpaoa) – to adopt a name of his own. The newcomer (Lester Isariuz) becomes Mama’s Boy. (Better than Daddy’s Boy, for sure.)
            All of the existing storytellers have identities and backstories mundane by comparison to the freedom and community of their weekly gatherings. This is their escape into the metaphorical,  the surreal and possibly into their better selves.
            That’s all immediately appealing to Mama’s Boy, who seamlessly joins the others’ acting out of their narrative scenarios, turning objects into props, improvising dialogue, sharing their shifting emotions.
            It can be slow going in spite of strong, committed performances from these four actors. They’re playing, we’re invited to listen in, but it’ still their game and they know the rules. The stories can be gently introspective at times or, in Mama’s Boy’s case near the end, in frantic motion. The fears seem real as do the longings for love.
            I don’t know that a 90-minute “We Lovers” seems much different than the 50-minute “We Lovers,” and considering that there is no shortage of stories to tell, this could have been a 100-minute version of “We Lovers.” It ends, but as you’ll discover, not when and how you suspect it will.
            Though the characters interact with each other during the storytelling, each one’s turn is essentially monologual – Doctor Sister’s and Mama’s Boy less so than the other two. It’s that structure that gives “We Lovers” its spoken-word motif.
            Loud Fridge has done more with the spare Light Box Theater space than I’ve seen in other companies’ productions. Heather Larsen’s set is appropriately eerie and lantern-lit and strewn with the sort of detritus one might find in a woods where young people hang out to mingle or get high – or maybe to tell stories.
            A consistent soundscape of hooting owls, chirping crickets and buzzing cicadas is heard above the action on stage. Unfortunately the jetliners that fly over Loma Portal intrude on the designed woodsy isolation.
            Well, for flights of fancy such as those in “We Lovers,” the great flying machines piercing the night sky may be appropriate.
            “We Lovers” runs through Oct. 12 at the Light Box Theater in Liberty Station, Point Loma.