Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, Vt.
Written by Lena Kaminsky, directed by M. Bevin O’Gara
“Am I OK? Do I look all right?”
Here is another play that doesn’t end, it merely stops. Lena Kaminsky has written a fascinating play about three people, disconnected from reality, who come together for a while all the time waiting for their lives to find direction. They are fascinating folks in a situation comedy that only gets quiet laughs and doesn’t land any true punches. The play is good, but not great, and the performances are great but not good; each is a gem, but their sense of connection with their world, each other, and other folks—some long dead and no longer accessible—is very limited. Elaine, who runs the dilapidated transfer/salvage station where all of the action takes place, has lost the love of her life, a former schoolteacher who had both Kenny and Carla in her classes, though not in the same decade. Kenny, who works for Elaine, has lost his girlfriend and won’t try another friendship. Carla is house-sitting for her mother and feels she has the right to remove all of her mother’s mirrors and junk them at the salvage station. These three misfits come together and forge the play now on stage at the Dorset Theatre Festival in Vermont.
If this show has stars, they would be Christopher and Justin Swader, the set designers, who have created the most fascinating pair of rooms seen on stage so far this season. It is an autumn set, trees bare, leaves on the ground, an odd sense of wind without any wind; a cluttered office, an open shed where salvaged trash is divided into categories; a yard where people can move around or commune. A lot of trash is carried onto the stage and distributed in this play, and I assume this causes a lot of work for the stage crew before each performance. But the most honest assessment we can make is that these bags of things don’t matter, for it is the three people who are the salvage of the title: Each needs to be saved for something yet to come, recycled into humanity’s larger stage, themselves the “Salvage” of the title. At the end of this one-act play, we have no idea what will become of any of them. We only know that life hasn’t ended for them yet and there is something more to come, even if it is only more of the same.
Carla, at age 55, intent on realistically understanding herself, has perhaps the most pertinent journey ahead. She has lost the friend who has given her purpose, and her mother is in her mid-80s and is a much more spirited soul. Carla has options, but the question is will she take advantage of them. She is played by the playwright’s sister Eva Kaminsky, and she is so good at playing indifference and disappointment that we are left wondering how much is performance and how much is human reality. The play centers around her character’s needs and insecurities, opening with a sad, sorrowful monologue before one of the soon-to-be-salvaged mirrors. She sets the tone for the play and maintains it throughout.
Elaine is played by Marcia DeBonis, whose congeniality is infectious. Nothing seems to faze her for long, and comebacks are her thing. Much as autumn becomes winter becomes Christmas, Elaine is seasonally joyful. Though not the central character, she takes center stage a great deal of the time, and she deserves it. DeBonis is wonderful to watch and listen to as she develops a love for the herbal aromas that Carla evolves into a business. Her other half, Kenny, is almost a love interest for Carla but never allows himself to get that far into their freindship. He has an aloof sense of community that both frustrates and elates the woman. Robbie Sublett gives this role a peculiar look and sound, and he keeps Carla, and us, guessing about the remote possibility of romance. If the play is set in deep central Maine, his character is a perfect replica of the traditional Maine man.
Director M. Bevin O’Gara has paced the show appropriately for these characters. She never really allows them to touch one another, maintaining her author’s intentions of separateness, and while an embrace might change our perception of these folks, she stays true to the author’s needs. Her production is abetted by the Swaders, by Chelsea Kerl’s excellent costumes, and by Daisy Long’s impersonal lighting design, which emphasizes the cold atmosphere of the play.
This is not your usual comedy (no one dies in the play, so it is technically a comedy), but it is a graphic, quirky comic look at a segment of humanity we probably know little about. It is not a perfect play, but it is a perfectly handsome way to start a Dorset season of fascinating theater.
“Salvage” plays at the Dorset Theatre Festival in Dorset, Vt., through July 5. For information and tickets, visit Dorset Theatre Festival’s website.
