Broad's Eve View Reviews "Love is a Blue Tick Hound" at Rapid Lemon Productions

“The Gulf,” part of “Love Is a Blue Tick Hound” at Rapid Lemon Producitons. Pictured: Donna Ibale and Aladrian C. Wetzel. Photo courtesy of Rapid Lemon Productions.

Love is a Blue Tick Hound, and other remedies for the common ache by Audrey Cefaly is presented by Rapid Lemon Productions at Baltimore Theatre Project and Capital Fringe as a part of the D.C. Women’s Voices Theatre Festival (January 12 - February 17, 2018)

There is a little bit of Lucinda Williams in Audrey Cefaly's four poignant one-acts collected under the title Love is a Blue Tick Hound at Rapid Lemon Productions. Cefaly's characters, like those in Williams' country-blues ballads, ache for love. They yearn for something better than the lives they've scratched-out of limited circumstances along the Gulf Coast. They are a little bruised, a little used-up.

These are ordinary, plain, even small lives—a bartender, a sewage plant worker, a dishwasher, a waitress—but Cefaly catches them in moments of choice that are far from trivial. In a tumbled-down boarding house, an empty diner, and a weathered fishing boat, couples fight with—and fight for—each other. They push, resist, and strive to give shape and action to their unarticulated desires. Some win small victories against their demons, some suffer defeat, but none go down without a fight. 

In The Gulf, the most effective and best-performed play of the evening, Kendra (a feisty Donna Ibale) and her girlfriend, Betty (Aladrian C. Wetzel) take a twilight fishing trip in the BP-spoiled Delta. They are quite literally stuck in a boat too tiny to contain the pent-up resentment between them, and perhaps not sturdy enough to withstand the pressure when it breaks. Clutching a dog-eared copy of What Color is Your Parachute as a talisman against a dead-end life, Betty tries to convince a recalcitrant Kendra to move to the city with her so she can attend college, only to discover the greater depths of their dissatisfaction. The two actors give very believable, lived-in performances. Wetzel, especially, weaves a kind of nervous melancholy through Betty's otherwise hopeful determination.   

At the same time, I wondered how the casting of actors somewhat too young for their roles might be a misreading of the plays. In her casting notes, Cefaly invites actors of any age or ethnicity to play the characters, but says that "there is a certain heartache known only to those who have been scarred and kicked around by life." So, I wonder—if Kendra and Betty had been together two decades rather than the two years suggested by these young actors, would there be more at stake if the relationship falls apart?  If, at forty, Betty and Kendra were facing a last-chance-Texaco choice to make a more expansive life, rather than two twenty-somethings squabbling over misremembered slights, would the risks be more threatening?

Probably, and probably for the better, dramatically speaking.

You have to admire a playwright who can pack a full and complete dramatic gesture in a short play. In Fin and Euba, Fin dares her friend Euba to move to Manhattan to become a songwriter. (She might have the talent to write the spare, juke-joint songs reminiscent, again, of Williams.) But she won't know unless she opens the letter from the New York record producer to whom she's sent her demo. Cefaly fully believes in Euba's anguish as she confronts her fear of failure—and she makes us believe in her, too, even as she reduces her lucky break to ashes.

“Fin & Euba,” part of “Love Is a Blue Tick Hound”at Rapid Lemon Producitons. Pictured: Lauren Erica Jackson and Carolyn Koch. Photo courtesy of Rapid Lemon Productions.

"They push, resist, and strive to give shape and action to their unarticulated desires. Some win small victories against their demons, some suffer defeat, but none go down without a fight."

Cefaly's characters often lack the words to express their existential longings—a lot of the conflict occurs in silence and stillness. Unfortunately, the directors fill too few of these wordless moments with the kind of specific behavior and vivid staging that might help the audience understand the characters' hidden fantasies and fears. Silence should serve as a window through which we can catch subtext, tension, and vulnerability; instead, the pauses are, essentially, time-outs. In her script notes, Cefaly reminds producers that these plays are not to be rushed—but "not rushed" doesn't mean "not urgent." The characters are prize-fighters; they struggle with all their might, even when they don't have language. This continual stalling-out of the conflict, coupled with too-dim lighting and too-soft speaking, make things a little draggy, sloppy and low-stakes.
 
According to petfinder.com (my go-to website for all things dog) blue tick hounds possess "the endurance and fortitude to trail and track all night, the intelligence and instinct to follow a lead across miles of unfamiliar mountains, and the uncanny ability to turn up the next morning—with torn pads and ears—in the same spot where the hunt began." In this beautifully rendered, off-the-highway world, Cefaly's characters are as loyal, tenacious and tough as the eponymous hound, where lonely hearts hunt for love.