Review of The Gift: Comedy or Morality Play?

The Gift is a play in one act by Joanna Murray-Smith. Directed by Maria Aitken.

Sadie -- Kathy Baker

Ed -- Chris Mulkey

Chloe -- Jaime Ray Newman

Martin -- James Van Der Beek 

          

We hustled into the Geffen Playhouse last Saturday night just as the last people were being seated. “What’s this play about?” my husband asked. I didn’t have a clue. Two couples meet at a resort I had time to read in the playbill before the lights dimmed. 

         

And, oh what couples they were. I’ve met them before at cocktail parties. Sadie and Ed, wealthy and from L.A., are celebrating their 25^th anniversary. Sadie laments their settled ways and loss of passion. Ed either hasn’t noticed, or he accepts it, and they both distract themselves with a frothy consumerism. The other couple, Martin and Chloe, are still in love after eight years of marriage. They're settled in New York, and are open, not in the least condescending toward this older couple with whom, at first glance, they have nothing in common.

Twist # 1: Although suburban and traditional, Sadie and Ed have no children. Martin and Chloe are entrenched in the Manhattan art scene: they have a four-year-old daughter.

            The four amuse themselves through a night of champagne, wine and mojitos. Sexual innuendoes pop up, but thank goodness no one does anything about them because I want to be surprised. With all that alcohol, they promise to be honest, and to always tell the truth to one another. Both couples appear to be decent, well-meaning people.  Ed is voluble, as is Sadie.  Chloe opens up more as the night progresses, but Martin is removed, reticent: he holds back.  They discuss jazz, which is an abstract artform Ed understands, the subtleties of wine, raising a child in the modern world, and conceptual art.

con·cep·tu·al art  

Art in which the idea presented by the artist is considered more important than the finished product, if any exists.

            Ed, who earned his fortune with woodworking machines, asks Martin about his latest work: it's a giant glass cube with a hologram of a child inside it which will be on display at Tate Modern. “Did you make the Cube?” Ed asks.  Martin hired a team to build it, because it's the idea behind it that's important (see definition above and think of the LACMA rock, also known as the Levitated Mass).  The couples plan a sailing outing the next day.  In a dramatic boating accident, Martin saves Ed's life. 

            It's a life-altering event for everyone: a second chance. Ed wants to do something for Martin. A gift is promised if only Martin and Chloe will name it. They plan a reunion in one year.

Twist #2: They meet in L.A., and each couple reveals their narcissistic side.  

            All of them want a redo, to turn their lives back to a point where they found joy, not only in each other, but in their dreams and aspirations.  Sadie and Ed's passion for life and each other has been reinvigorated, and Chloe and Martin discovered a new truth about themselves. Chloe leads the way with a heart-warming story about their fostering of a dog that they come to love. The dog returns to its owner. Chloe and Martin are sad, even try to find loopholes which would allow them to keep the dog.

            Then . . .  they get over it, even feel relief that the pressure is off. The pressure of responsibility, or the pressure of love?  What's this have to do with the Gift, you might be wondering.  Martin becomes loquacious in revealing what they want, a trait which he had exhibited previously only when discussing conceptual art.

Twist #3: Martin and Chloe want to give their kid to Sadie and Ed.

con·cep·tu·al mo·ral·i·ty

Morality in which an idea or behavior is neither good nor bad, right or wrong, but is validated by the outcome, if one exists.

            Martin and Chloe love their daughter, but don't think they're good parents. What it boils down to is that they're just not in the moment with her.  The idea of her is more real to them than the flesh and blood kid.  That person is boring.  A child as art is more important to them than the child herself, and they know this is wrong . . . and not just for their child, but for them, as well.  Ed gets all bent out of shape because this is not a normal request, not traditional, not right!  Yet, his character is one I can imagine saying that some people should get a license to have children, or shouldn't have had them, or should of given them to a more responsible set of parents.

           

            In an attempt to calm him down, Sadie' reminds him of the time when she became pregnant at age 18. “We were too young to have children,” Ed says. My understanding is that their one chance at parenthood was a joint decision not to go there. They had made a choice that some people would abhor.  Quiet reigned on the set and in the audience.

Twist #4: Nothing is resolved.

            The last backdrop is a visual of that glass box with the child inside. We are left to think either in the box or outside of it.  The ending prompts the wish that the glass around the perfect child will be broken with Ed and Sadie.

            A promo on the Geffen website for this play reads "Murray-Smith has Oscar Wilde's gift for one-liners." Sounds like a comedy, doesn’t it?  While there are plenty of laughs while they’re at the resort, I'd argue that The Gift is less a comedy and more a morality play.

            The actors were outstanding.  Derek McLane (scenes) and Howard Werner (media) designed the sets which are superbly minimalist: L.A. skyline, beach sunsets, and even the storm so that the emphasis was on the actors. John Gromada, sound design, and Peter Kaczorowski, lighting, also added to the drama without overwhelming it.

Conceptual Art Exposed:

8 Ways To Say I Love My Life

         Saturday was a fun and fulfilling day that began with a reading from The Sandoval Sisters at the Los Angeles chapter of the Historical Fiction Society.  I had the opportunity to not only meet other writers, but also readers of historical fiction who were looking for something new.

            That evening was very special.  Not only did my husband and I get together with old friends we hadn’t seen all summer, but we headed out to Boyle Heights and Casa 0101 theatre for the play, 8 Ways to Say I Love My Life. The 2009 Imagen Award-winning show has been restaged in celebration of the publication of the book by the same name.

            As you might guess from the title the subject is self-affirmation, but the plot turns on how the eight writers whose stories are performed got to this point.  It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t always pretty.  The monologues are short, tight, and focused on domestic violence, the loss of a friend and mentor, latchkey children taken from their mother and put into the foster care system, a father diagnosed with schizophrenia, the choice not to have children, attraction to losers, and taking a chance to live your dream.

            These women don’t feel sorry for themselves, both in terms of what life dealt them, and their own choices.  Mistakes and screw-ups are described with humor, and their Aha! moments are met with forgiveness for any part they may have played in their in own low self-esteem days, which also happens to be the title of  Josefina Lopez's story, My Low Self Esteem Days, performed by Yvonne DeLaRosa. Pilar of Strength, a monologue written by Margo De Leon and performed by Kikey Castillo, struck a personal note with one of my companions, and Bel Hernandez Castillo's The Power to Say You Belong spoke to me loud-and-clear when she related her youthful ambition and the chances she took to achieve it.

        

Artificial Intelligence and Real Love

Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom and the play by Michael Golamco, Build, currently at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, would not at first glance appear to have anything in common, but they both struck the same notes with me:  creativity, spontaneous intelligence, innocence, love.

In Build, Kip and Will have been building video games together since college, and they’ve been successful at it.  They also love the same woman, but she’s dead.  Or, is she?  This isn’t a play with a ghost, but her spirit—her intelligence and creative joy—and her sadness, has been regenerated via artificial intelligence.  It was never clear to me if she was a robot or her essence was captured—coded, if you will—and contained within the computer.  She’s alive to Kip and Will, though, and this ensemble cast transcends the geek trope with their creative obsessions, but particularly with her zest for Life.

The two men, testy and combative, meet on the fertile ground of their imaginations and learn something about love—their love for the A.I., but also for each other.  They free themselves by freeing her.

Moonrise Kingdom also creates a fantasy world where two 12-year-old misfits fall in love and go on an adventure.  To say Suzy and Sam run off together would be to demean their intelligence and organization.  They want nothing to do with a hierarchical world where they’re considered outsiders, but they have the same innocence and joie de vivre as the A.I. in Build.  While there is a larger cast in the movie, the close-ups are of the boy and the girl where all their quirkiness and hunger for the world fills their eyes. 

In Build the three characters each change.  In Moonrise Kingdom, the children’s lives are modified, but their love isn’t, they don’t change, but the adults around them do.

Both movie and play are set pieces for looking back and confronting the past while at the same time facing the present.  Each vehicle is an attempt—eerie, funny, earnest—to bypass the ordinary through imagination.  There is no evil intelligence here.  The characters are smart and loving.  In Build, they celebrate joy and creativity with the A.I.  In Moonrise Kingdom, Sam and Suzy are innocent and smart and creative.  In the beginning and at the end, their eagerness for life is the same as the A.I.'s.