By Sheila Abrams
In an unexpectedly intimate and pleasant performing space that’s connected with the recreation department of Roxbury Township, the 4-character drama, The Price of Illusion, had its world premiere performances during the last two weekends of June. The play, performed without intermission, is the work of New Jersey native Wayne Thorpe and was directed by Matt McCarthy.
Identified as the Investor’s Bank Theater, the venue is a room in a building that was once part of the Roxbury municipal complex, and it is next door to a gym. For the production by the JAM Theater Company of Morris County, the audience was seated at tables, cabaret-style, and treated to complimentary refreshments courtesy of the Roxbury Arts Alliance.
The play is both compact and content-filled. All four characters are on stage most of the time, exchanging rapid-fire and emotion-packed dialogue. The conversation is often funny, and often sex-related, with vocabulary that might not pass muster on network television but would not raise an eyebrow on HBO.
The surprise is that what seems, at first, light and amusing, gets darker and more serious as it progresses. Four attractive young women in a living room, lubricated by alcohol, exchange barbs. But this is no sitcom.
Two of the women, Tina and Cassie, are sisters but not exactly loving ones. Tina obeys the rules and is annoyed that Cassie arrives for their movie date typically late and drunk. She is accompanied by Helen, a woman who works in her office. Tina and a friend, Nicole, have been waiting. We’ve learned that they are professional (but what profession is not clear), upper middle class, prosperous and probably well-educated. Cassie is presumably all these things as well, though more of a rebel.
Helen is the square peg. It is no accident that, while the other three are blonde, Helen is dark-haired. She is, we learn, Hispanic. She is from Camden, which she describes with something less than affection. In short order, she gets to her purpose in being there.
Helen is the child of a rape. Her sperm donor—she is clear that she does not regard him as a father—is Tina’s and Cassie’s lawyer-father. The rape occurred when he was a college student and he got away with it.
Tina and Cassie do not believe it, but somehow, in seconds, Helen produces proof—on her smart phone! (I don’t know if this is possible. It certainly sounds unlikely, but I really do not know.) Tina and Cassie object, but they have been squabbling about the dysfunctional nature of their parents’ marriage. And Nicole, whose purpose in the drama has until now been unclear, confirms that the father in question had been known for molesting his daughters’ friends. Not Mr. Nice Guy.
It seems that Helen has known about the rape for a long time. Bright and attractive, she has gotten a hard-won education, obtained a job at the same firm at which Cassie works, wormed her way into Cassie’s good graces and gotten into this apartment and situation. All of this for the sole purpose of revealing to the two little rich girls, as she sees them, that their father is a creep!
This is the point of the play but also its problem. It seems contrived that Helen’s whole life to this point has been aimed toward this one goal. And, having accomplished that goal, has she really achieved anything? Revenge? Satisfaction? Has a wrong been righted? Obviously not. She has just shattered more lives.
The production is intense and absorbing, with four excellent performances. Janine Lee Papio, as Helen, comes close to stealing the show. On stage and on her feet through almost the entire hour-plus (in extremely high-heeled and painful-looking shoes), she comes across as focused, intelligent and fueled by rage. She is so justified in her anger that it is painful to realize that she is directing it at .he wrong people. Because Tina and Cassie are as much victims of the monstrous father as she is.
Gianna Esposito as Tina and Claire Bochenek as Cassie do a beautiful job of creating a relationship between the two sisters fraught with mutual dislike, which nonetheless draws them together as their family and image of their father is attacked. And Jillian Petrie is excellent as Nicole, the outsider, who almost functions like a Greek chorus, commenting on the action until provoked by her honesty, Tina asks her to leave.
Intensity in theater is a good thing, especially when accompanied, as it was in this situation, by a glass of wine. It was a grown-up evening and left the audience with a lot to think about.
