This is my script but that doesn't mean I'm not perfectly objective about the opening performance.
In the final weeks of rehearsal, Ed Nattenberg revolutionized the concept of the play developed earlier in the rehearsal cycle. Re-setting, re-blocking and even re-casting, he produced a set of jagged fragments of action juxtaposed into a story.
The characters of Gwen and Robert aspire to the upper class of San Francisco but in their past lurks a secret that must be kept.
Rebecca Pantazes plays Gwen, confident, narcissistic, using all her powers of feminine sexuality to define herself and to control others, determined to get what she wants.
Leer Relleum plays Robert, the husband, a meteoric business success fatally preoccupied with a larger self-image. He commands a growing empire that constructs himself as its central fiction, that tries to hide the savagery within. Leer plays his part with strength and vulnerability.
Leah Shesky plays Judy, preoccupied, intellectual, delicate, Gwen's alter-ego. Leah is many people throughout the evening, always intense and self-concerned, resourceful yet fragile, seducer and the seduced, victor and victim.
Ted Speros plays Anthony, the stalking outsider prowling around the fringes of the fragile social network on which he feeds. Ted plays not a single person but a man who assumes many masks in his effort to penetrate the mystery of the clique he preys upon.
Oliver Greenlaw plays the barkeeper and the detective, aloof, uninvolved, objective, and self-centered. He embodies the solidity of the observer of post-modern life. He tries to evaluate its irreconcilable contradictions, tries to stand outside the chaos, to understand it, and to bring to it the order that he craves.
Edward Nattenberg plays Mike, the man who loses his ability to mask his vulnerability revealed by the fragmentation of personality undergoing upheaval in relationship. Nattenberg's Mike is powerfully dangerous, losing control while struggling for personality, trying to reunite around a principle or object of desire or target of loathing.
Sitting in the audience, I found myself unable and unwilling to be perfectly objective and not just because the company was enacting my script. After all, they had taken it down and rebuilt it since the last time I saw it. Several scenes were profoundly different in their appearance. I had to construct the story of the play myself and in so doing to add to the list of things I was willing to do while watching a play. Nattenberg has shattered the fourth wall. Some re-assembly of the audience is required.
Man Without a Mask plays until November 6th at the Phoenix Annex, 414 Mason Street, 4th Floor, near Union Square.
http://www.catchynametheatre.org/
All box office and concession revenues are paid to the actors. The cast and crew frequent Lefty O'Doul's pub at 333 Geary after the show and always welcome members of the audience to join them.
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