By Paul Horsley

Theater is like any form of communication in that it boils down to one thing: two people talking. With this in mind, Kansas City Actors Theatre has determined to devote its 11th season to “two-handers,” plays consisting of two characters who command the stage for an entire evening. True, economics might have figured in here, for KCAT devoted its 10th anniversary to some costly large-scale plays (including Hamlet and Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in alternating repertory). “But this was also a conscious choice to try and get back to the real heart of what theater is, which is two people talking to each other,” said actor Brian Paulette, who several years ago joined several top actors in building a company devoted to “plays that may not always have the biggest commercial draw, but who cares? they need to be done.”

Dennis Hennessy of New Theatre Restaurant directs D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1978 The Gin Game, set in an assisted living facility, and Doug Weaver directs Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo, a reworking of The Zoo Story, one of the quintessential “two-guys-meet-on-a-park-bench” plays of our time. Technically, Albee’s 2004 reworking of his 1959 The Zoo Story (with a new first act and an additional character) is no longer a two-hander, “but there are never more than two people onstage at the same time,” Brian said with a laugh, “so we figured, well, close enough.” The season is filled out with British playwright Caryl Churchill’s futuristic A Number and Athol Fugard’s prison drama The Island.

The Gin Game deals with two aging residents of an elder-facility they hate. As they try to escape their surroundings with games of gin rummy, they find themselves trapped in old patterns. “They really want friendship,” said Dennis, a theater veteran who has directed his share of intimate dramas. “They’re both very lonely at the top of the play, but they end up being even more lonely at the end because they don’t know how to deal with each other. They can’t escape the foibles they’ve developed in their lives.” For Dennis the play, which stars brilliant Kansas City actors Marilyn Lynch and Victor Raider-Wexler, is “a road map of a life of unhappiness and loneliness and regrets and unresolved issues.”

A roadmap to a bleak landscape, it seems. “Some people would like for that hope at the end, and I guess that’s what we should have in theater,” Dennis said. “But in a lot of cases that doesn’t happen. They’re on paths to wherever they’re going and they really can’t change their fate. They’ve been there too long.” To be sure, the play begins with hope, he said: “That’s where the arc begins. You think, Oh gosh, they’ve found each other. But it never comes to fruition.” If there is hope to be found here, Dennis concluded, it’s that “maybe the audience can see this and make a change in their own lives, for the positive.”

What makes The Gin Game as fresh now as it was in 1978 is our ongoing angst over care of the aged, and our guilt about “warehousing” them, to use Coburn’s term. “That was my mother’s greatest fear,” Dennis said, “that she would end up like that. We had the resources, and we were able to get her a one-floor house … I think that’s my fear too. … We’re all afraid of that loneliness of no longer being needed, of having no purpose in life.”

At Home at the Zoo, KCAT’s September production, also tells a tale of alienation and sociopathic despair, albeit from the standpoint of three substantially younger characters than those in Coburn’s drama. Brian Paulette, Jessalyn Kincaid and Forrest Attaway star in this tale of New Yorkers “caged” in a life of claustrophobic sameness. Domestically inclined Peter just wants to get away from his wife, Anna, for a few minutes, but once outdoors, rough-and-tumble Jerry won’t leave him alone. “I think in Albee’s mind the play was always about Peter,” said Lawrence-based director Doug Weaver. “So I think he was trying to find a way to explain Peter’s purpose, why Peter is there. … And in an interesting way I think he’s done it.”

The Zoo Story, now more than a half-century old, has long served as an essential “theater-school” exercise: Critics have studied it, young playwrights have emulated it, actors and directors performed it. “It sort of developed its own being, its own presence,” Doug said. “It’s one of the greatest examples of taking an exercise and turning it into reality.” Two-handers provide a perfect theatrical pressure-cooker because “nothing matters except what’s being said and what’s being thought,” Doug said. “You don’t have the extraneousness of surroundings, like a kitchen where you worry if the microwave works, or a library where you have to worry about what other people are thinking. It is basic and simple.”

What’s remarkable about At Home at the Zoo, Brian said, is that 50 years after the original “the author’s voice is still the same.” Albee has again found an ear for “that kind of stilted way in which they talk” in the original. Moreover the new play (essentially a two-hander with an extra scene) provides a perfect forum for a company that calls itself Actors Theatre, Doug added. “The company was founded to give actors work: to allow them to do interesting, meaty, fun stuff where they didn’t have to worry about anything except being actors.” Moreover, Brian said, “even if someone doesn’t recognize the name of a play we do, they’ll come out. Because they know that Actors Theatre is not going to do it if it’s not worth doing.”

The Gin Game (August 12-30) and At Home at the Zoo (September 9-27) are both at City Stage, Union Station. 816-235-6222 or kcactors.org

Top of page: Marilyn Lynch and Victor Raider-Wexler, who appear in KCAT’s production of ‘The Gin Game.’

All photos by Brian Paulette and Jeff Rumans / Courtesy of KCAT. 

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.

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