Light clarity avocado salad in the morning
after all the terrible things I do how amazing it is
to find forgiveness and love, not even forgiveness
since what is done is done and forgiveness isn’t love
and love is love nothing can ever go wrong
though things can get irritating boring and dispensable
(in the imagination) but not really for love
though a block away you feel distant the mere presence
changes everything like a chemical dropped on a paper
and all thoughts disappear in a strange quiet excitement
I am sure of nothing but this, intensified by breathing
“Poem”
–Frank O’Hara
A. Rey Pamatmat’s new play, after all the terrible things I do, takes more than its title from
this 1966 poem by Frank O’Hara. True, it is about the terrible things some
people do. And it does set its two characters on a path toward forgiveness and
love. But it also compellingly charts the tangles and hazards of that path. Light
and clarity may express the quality of a morning after, but the journey to
simple forgiveness is still fraught with the disordered cascade of emotions
suggested by the poem’s later lines. Pamatmat’s debut play is a its best when
it grapples with the moments when “all thoughts disappear.”
It begins simply—with a job interview in an independent
bookstore. Daniel (Mark Junek), an aspiring author who has just moved back to
his home town, is nervous, eager to please. Linda (Sophia Skiles) is friendly
businesslike. In the course of the conversation, the subject turns to O’Hara,
Daniel’s literary obsession of the moment, and he excitedly recites one of his
poems by memory, adding that it would be great date material—perfect to get a
man in the mood.
The comment stops Linda in her tracks, and we assume that
she’s uncomfortable with the idea of hiring a gay man. But there is also a bit
of mystery about her behavior—she holds his hand across the table when
discussing a sensitive subject, and absent-mindedly calls him “honey” as he is
leaving the store.
That puzzle is solved soon enough, but others are posed,
explored and mostly, tentatively resolved through the course of the play, which
spans several months in Linda and Dan’s evolving relationship. It’s a journey
of deeper and deeper truth-telling, revealing two histories that are
intertwined, and unpacking assumptions and attitudes that have festered in the
secretive darkness.
It’s a play that demands actors who are willing to go deep,
and The Rep has found two performers who take on the roles with both honesty
and restraint. They are a study in contrasts: Through subtle physical control, Sophia
Skiles projects Linda’s hidden pain from the first scene, long before we learn
her complete story. By contrast, Mark Junek is all nervous energy and
quick-trigger reactions. We know, as well, that there is more to him than meets
the eye or is outlined on his resume. The characters revelations and shifting
relationship is perceptively shaped by director May Adrales. Even the exchanges
that are driven by abstractions—ones that seem to be taken from an afternoon
talk-show transcript rather than a real, human conversation—are given weight
and specificity by Adrales and her actors.
Daniel Zimmerman’s hyper-realistic bookstore stage
appropriately surrounds Pamatmat’s characters with hundreds of books—stories
that by necessity, mostly end up in a neat and tidy ending. There’s hint of
resolution in the closing moments of terrible
things, but in the hands of a skilled playwright and thoughtful performers,
there is both hope and unease in the “strange quiet excitement” that fills the
theater as the lights fade.
Photos by Michael Brosilow
