A strong cast at Mad Cow Theatre doesn’t always cut through the ambiguities of Sonnets, which premiered in 2000 as a collection of 30-some monologues but has been pared back to 17. Under John DiDonna’s direction, some offer vivid glimpses of character, but others prove too evasive to reverberate as they should.
The scene is a long, high passageway — an otherworldly subway platform — where one character after another appears to say what he or she must say. Each of the six actors plays multiple roles, and each of them has moments to shine.
Jill Jones plays a quiet girl who speaks of her bonds to her mother, and Trenell Mooring a young woman trying to explain the extraordinary experience she had as a girl. Leander Suleiman is a young woman who tells of being attacked by a group of boys, and Avis-Marie Barnes a mother of 16 who is taunted by her husband’s lover.
Ron McDuffie places one character in the myth of Icarus, who flies too near the sun to escape his father’s perfection. And Michael Sapp tells of discovering his love for his baby son — and shows his anguish that his son doesn’t worry about him after he’s gone.
Sapp, who is new to Mad Cow, makes his characters glow, and the rest of the cast is fine. Barnes, especially, finds the humor in the piece, most of all in the woman who declares what she has found out about life: “Baseball is a game, not a metaphor,” she proclaims.
But DiDonna and his actors don’t overcome the play’s essential stillness, and too many of these brief glimpses almost demand not to be understood. The title is all too apt, it seems: Sonnets does have the grace of poetry, but it’s often poetry that we in the 21st century shun.
Elizabeth Maupin can be reached at emaupin@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5426.
Theater review
‘Sonnets for an Old Century’
Where: Mad Cow Theatre, 105 S. Magnolia Ave., Orlando.
When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through July 6 (also, 8 p.m. July 2).
Cost: $22 general, $20 seniors and students, $15 July 2.
Call: 407-297-8788.
Online: madcowtheatre.com.
Photos by Tom Hurst for Mad Cow Theatre: Top, Leander Suleiman. Middle: Michael Sapp. Bottom: Jill Jones.
Sonnets For An Old Century
Sonnets For An Old Century
By Jose Rivera
Directed by John DiDonna
Mad Cow Theatre, Orlando, FL
It’s not easy to find a thread through this disparate collection of monologs about urban life, but each of the individual stories are gems. The ensemble of tellers represents a slice of Los Angles inhabitants, some funny, some sad, and all are about Life, however you define it. Michael Sapp performs two of the best - a dad and his son playing tourist and accidentally wearing on some gang colors, and finding similarities been slaughtering live stock and a black man dealing with the LAPD. Jill Jones tells the story of choking on the brown air of LA until one night she saw the most fabulous sunset, and meets the love of her life who’s been living next door for the past 3 years. Ron McDuffie argues with God over his working class sins, and Trennel Mooring agonized over sending her child to a safe, caring mostly white private school or to exposing her to the full fury of the Angelino educational class struggle. Avis Marie Barnes played a Spanish woman who supported her loser husband while popping out 16 consecutive bambini, and Leander Suleiman tearfully described bullying and near rape in the school yard.
There’s little to tie these stories together other than location and a loose time frame, although the dramaturgy notes refers to author Rivera’s belief that writers “Writing outside their culture,” a worthy attitude that clashes with the “it’s a Black Thing, you wouldn’t understand” view so often taken when whites write about minority cultures. If Mr Rivera sets out capture other’s worldviews, he’s done an admirable job, and if Mr. DiDonna strives to make us think outside of our condos, he also has excelled.
For more information on Mad Cow, please visit http://www.madcowtheatre.com
ORLANDO | If you've ever been to New York City and used public transportation, you're familiar with the unique sounds to be heard as you wait for the next subway train to arrive.
Sometimes it's just a kind of eerie silence, as you and a couple of others quietly await the arrival of the next train.
But if you used the system often enough, you'll know that the sounds heard down there are more than just the loud rush of the train as it comes to the platform.
Other times you'll notice someone standing a few feet away, having a lengthy conversation - and a loud enough one for you to hear - with themselves.
Actors, rehearsing their lines? Perhaps.
A business executive, going over a presentation to the board? Maybe.
More likely, though, you'll notice them discussing intimate details about their lives, almost as if they either wanted the universe to hear every word - or didn't care if the universe did.
They're so tightly wrapped up in their own problems and disputes and obsessions, and in those moments when they're standing on the platform, they seem oblivious to the fact that they're letting anyone within earshot get a glimpse into their most personal thoughts.
You might get a reminder of that while watching "Sonnets For An Old Century," a production by the Mad Cow Theatre of the play by Jose Rivera.
Or at least a part of the play by the playwright, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and perhaps best known for his screenplay for the film "The Motorcycle Diaries."
For this production, Mad Cow built an elevated stage, with the familiar steel blocks found in so many underground subway platforms, as well as the occasional sound of the rushing train over the loudspeakers.
Individuals come on stage, always one at a time, and they speak monologues - sonnets, really - about their lives. Not necessarily to the audience - they just talk about what's happening to them.
As the theater's artistic director, Alan Bruun, noted, this 90-minute production, performed without intermission, doesn't include every monologue that Rivera wrote, just selected ones.
At first, the play is jarring and difficult to comprehend.
Six actors come on stage, only one at a time, and we never learn their names.
The actors play multiple characters, and at first you're waiting to see if the monologues are linked in some way, to a storyline, or a shared experience.
Then it becomes clear they're not; instead, it's as if the characters have briefly invited us into their little world, or more appropriately, let us walk with them on a journey toward self discovery.
The monologues range from humorous to harrowing to sad, the characters themselves ranging from ordinary people who might remind you of someone you know, to others who seem so self-destructive they're shocking to watch.
"Sonnets For An Old Century" won't appeal to those who like very traditional theater with clear storylines, but it's nevertheless a very challenging and rewarding production for those who want something more elliptical and stimulating.
Rivera's monologues are performed by a highly talented cast and given a good deal of artistic flourish by the director, John DiDonna, so that even if there isn't a traditional form to this play, you get a great sense of the urban someplace where it's all happening, and of the diverse cultural identities who come onto the stage.
There's the woman who has given birth so many times - 16 children - that she jokes that she can deliver a baby without feeling a thing. Or the mentally unbalanced woman who crawls along the floor wearing a hospital bathrobe, talking about how she's obsessed with breathing onto a glass pane and then writing an X on it.
There's the Hollywood show biz wannabe who loudly rails about how he created the Fonz character and some big executive stole the idea for the hit show "Happy Days" … the Muslim woman who describes a brutal rape at the hands of school boys while others looked on but did nothing … the father from Dayton, Ohio, who brings his young son to the big city, then loses him when the father is struck by a car … the black mother who is outraged at what she thinks is racist behavior at the magnet school she sends her child to …
Some of the characters are dead, looking back.
Some are alive, looking forward. They're alternately angry, amused, traumatized, excited, frustrated.
In the hands of six very talented actors, the characters are also fascinating to watch.
If there's one thread that seems to link these characters, outside of the fact that they exist in an urban jungle, it's the spiritual quest they're on as they confront their own mortality.
"Sonnets" ends up being a hypnotic piece of experimental theater, a production that isn't afraid to be demanding of its audience, to ask them to work harder to comprehend what these characters are going through based on the brief moments we glimpse into their lives.
Some of the monologues - and performances - will haunt you long after the lights come on and you're headed home.
And you may also finding yourself walking the streets of Orlando and any other city in Central Florida, and spot a total stranger nearby, mumbling to themselves, and be reminded of someone you watched during "Sonnet's" run.
[ Michael Freeman can be reached at Michael.Freeman@theledger.com or at 863-421-5577.
