Arts & Life

A quality show bogged down

Perhaps cat-lovers had more in common with “By the Bog of Cats”, but aside from the elaborate set and the movement piece in the closing of the play, CSULB’s production of the 1998 play, by Marina Carr, left much to be desired.

Loosely based on the Greek tragedy of Medea, the play tells the story of Hester Swayne, played by Alyssa Garcia. An unpredictable, loose-cannon of a woman, Swayne clings to the memory of her mother as everything she holds dear is taken from her by those around her. Garcia gave an uneven performance, though her desperate, maniacal laughter in the final moments of the play was perfectly haunting.

Stripped of its layers of ambiguous mentions of ghosts and death, the play may have been more clear. The irony of a woman who kills her child to keep her from her father is already exciting enough ­— at least, it was for the Greeks. Why should the Irish need something more?

On that note, accents are extremely difficult to understand, and it is incredibly distracting when it feels like more effort is being put into an accent than anything else. The play, though originally produced in Dublin, includes no major piece of plot that makes Ireland a necessary setting.

With the exception of the obviously more experienced actors, the students who performed in the campus production may have been more comfortable on stage in their own dialects. This does not include Carolina Montenegro, who played Swayne’s seven-year-old daughter, Josie Kilbride.

In a performance that perfectly balanced complexity with youth, Montenegro carried the weight of the show, bringing the audience to laughter and, in the end, to tears. Even the slowest moments of the show were saved when she entered in her purple rain boots and pigtails.

The overwhelming darkness of the show was interrupted with the comic relief of Lottie Frick, who played the role of young Josie’s grandmother. With a presence larger than the show itself, Frick’s performance was caricature in nature, but sharp in execution.

Her timing, paired with a limitless connection to every element of her scenes, made for a sophisticated portrayal of a very immature and obnoxious character. The scenes in which Montenegro and Frick shared the stage felt the smoothest.

Though obviously a show put on by a newer class of students in the CSULB Theater Department, the production probably exceeded expectations. It is only the fault of director Alexis Macnab that the production was comprised of over-played emotions on stage that most likely wiped out the actors’ voices, and seemed to drain them of energy by the end of the show.

That said, the students in the show withheld nothing from their audience. In the various scenes they sent their energy at each other with an unrivaled intensity that was engaging and entertaining, despite the more administrative short-comings of the play.

All of the necessary elements of a quality production were in place, and the final moments of the show were dynamically dressed up with lighting and sound effects. Every actor was present for the final movement piece, in which Swayne did a dance with death to the tune of a lullaby her mother used to sing.

A little more of that, and the show may not have been so bogged down with the shortcomings of the direction given to the students, and Carr’s over-exercise of creative liberties.

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