San Diego Playbill

Bash: Latterday Plays
by UCSD Theatre and Dance

Bash, written by Neil LaBute, consists of three separate monologues tied together only by the dark side of human nature they explore and that the characters have some connection to the Church of Latter-Day Saints. It is not a night of light entertainment. These disturbing stories, well-written and portrayed a little too realistically by the actors, expose some of modern society's most troubling ills.

The first story, Iphigenia in Orem, has a man (David Kim) talking to an unseen stranger in a Las Vegas bar. He obviously has something weighing on him that he wants to get off his chest. He's a middle management businessman who complains that working in today's competitive business world can be stressful, but the real stress behind his story lies in the death of his five-month-old daughter several years ago. She suffocated under a heavy comforter while sleeping unsupervised in her parent's bed. The man was supposed to be watching her while his wife was away shopping. Police were suspicious, but eventually ruled the death accidental. Of course, if that was the whole story then David would not be so clearly uncomfortable yet determined to tell his story to this stranger in Las Vegas. This is a tale of modern job stress taking a tragic turn, performed with tremendous sincerity by David Kim.

The next segment, entitled A Gaggle of Saints, is performed by two people, John (Brian Sgambati) and Sue (Emily Donahoe), a young couple recently engaged. They appear to be talking to friends, but separately so that neither of them can hear what the other is saying. They are both telling the same story of the beginning of their relationship six years ago and a trip they just took to New York City to attend a ritzy "bash." At first they appear to be normal, church-going, upstanding young adults. John, though apparently on a caffeine high, starts out likeable enough, and Sue seems so sweet and innocent that it almost makes you ill. But when their first date is a result of John beating the hell out of Sue's former boyfriend with no provocation, and Sue being excited by it, you get a sense that these people have a dark side. The scary part is, they don't even recognize it as a dark side. After the big party in NYC, John and some friends of his chance upon a gay couple in Central Park. Homophobic due to his suppressed homosexual urges, John leads his friends along a violent path of hate reminiscent of the murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. But the morbidity doesn't end there.

Medea Redux ends the monologues. There's little doubt from the beginning that something bad happened in this one, as the young woman (Zina Camblin) is being interrogated by an unseen police detective. The woman, now in her late twenties, begins by telling the story of her youth when she was befriended by her junior high teacher. She is attracted by his profound talk of the tragedy of the human condition and his efforts to enjoy life despite the tragedy of it all. On the weekend of her fourteenth birthday he takes advantage of her attraction. When she tells him that she is pregnant, he encourages her to have their child, convinces her never to tell anyone who the father is, and informs her that he has to leave for a little while. The teacher ends up moving hundreds of miles away. She never divulges the identity of the father. They keep in touch a little, but he gets married and starts a family. On their child's fourteenth birthday they plan a little reunion. Shortly thereafter you learn the cause of her interrogation with the police, but you'll have to see the show to find out what that cause is. It's not as simple as you might guess.

Each of the stories unfolds very well, drawing you in, and has a little twist at the end. Long monologues can be difficult, but each of these four actors did a truly incredible job. Not just that there were no mistakes, but that the acting was so good that they made the characters seem absolutely real and filled with tremendous depth. These were characters that, whether I like it or not, will be permanently etched into my memory.

Rob Hopper
San Diego Playbill