Local
playwright looks to find the naked truth between memories and
existence
By
Denise Gibbs
Contributing writer
Posted April 5, 2007
On rare
occasions you get to witness the creator performing his
creation. Tuesday, now playing until April 18 at Annex
Theatre’s Capitol Hill Arts Center (CHAC), is one of those
unique moments. Local honored playwright, Paul Mullin, stars in
his own concoction as Audie on a typical Tuesday in his not so
typical life. Audie suffers from Korsakoff’s syndrome, a rare
sort of amnesia that makes him forget about who he is every time
he goes to sleep at night. The play starts with Mullin playing
Audie very child-like and having to remember simple tasks to
start his day in a hospital setting. Doctors and nurses guide
Audie through his day, but the later it gets the crueler his
aides seem to be, forcing him to remember the awful
circumstances and tragedies of his former life. Though
discombobulated in the beginning you start to sympathize with
Audie and start to wonder if he didn’t actually choose to live a
life of not remembering, so as not to have to return to his
heartbreaking reality. Towards the end you realize what a
torture it would be to live somewhere between life and memories
and what misery it would be to not progress. Your heart wants
to cheer Audie on to take the leap of truth and plunge back into
the real world no matter how harsh a reality it is.
The play itself
may seem tortuous at times, with scenes coming and going with
the lights going down and up which seems to represent the
blinking of an eye or the flashing of a memory in the mind’s
eye. Even with the 3/4 stage seating you are up close and
personal with the actors. Word of warning, if you have a modest
eye you may not want to sit too close for the revealing
bathing scene.
The memories
can be raw and at times confusing, embarrassing, maybe a little
boring but revealing. As is our own lives and the mundane of it
all.
After seeing
the show you may contemplate how your own Tuesday was. Was I
analyzed? Was my brain picked and prodded? Was I made to
remember my best and most awful memories in the course of one
day? What would it be like to remember these vivid details
everyday? And if I wasn’t sick then, would I be sick after being
required to remember these over and over again?
Some awful
truths are learned during the play and you wonder how hard the
human mind must work to suppress such awful things? At what
point during a bad day do you want to crawl in bed and say as
Audie says, “I’m finished! Tuesday is over!”
Mullin does a
fabulous job as Audie and plays a range of emotions from drunken
junk bond trader to child-like tantrums in the hospital. The
equally wonderful supporting cast does an excellent job with the
material they are provided and with the range of characters they
must play. Standouts are Joseph P. McCarthy who plays Moe,
fellow junk bond trader and mentor and the Gumshoe Priest, whose
interpretations are quite real and vivid. Cast member Karen Jo
Fairbrook gets some outstanding characters to play including a
prophetic street woman who has some of the best lines in the
show that could be snippets of wisdom for all of our lives such
as “Can’t remember everything, then you’d be too busy
remembering and no time to be.” Or “If these memories are dead,
gone for good, then part of you is dead. It’s like being born
every moment.”
Each actor in
Tuesday seems to get a work out with the numerous
characters they must portray. Though the snippets of stories may
not make the best story telling and the third act may not be the
happy ever after ending, the play does raise interesting
questions.
“Do we want a
new life? Would we take our chances with it, because tomorrow
never exists?”
Runs through
April 18 at the Annex
Theatre
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2006 All content property of European Weekly unless where otherwise
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