Raised in Captivity is mired in the madhouse

AIDS is tough to deal with. It’s sad and horrible. So is murder. So too are rape, prostitution, alcoholism, depression, and pretty much every other theme found in Nicky Silver’s Raised In Captivity, Mask and Bauble’s fall offering that opens tonight. While the play is purportedly a comedy, it deals in dark hues, which cast shadows over its characters, all of whom are unhappily searching for something more, in themselves and in others.

While it’s important to remember that the cast and crew of the show are all students with relatively few years of life experience to draw from and a lot of homework to do, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that they’re in way over their heads. The play is an examination of relationships-brother and sister, husband and wife, therapist and patient, parent and child-and the torture people inflict upon themselves under the guise of love. That said, it’s difficult to tell if the script falls short of what it’s trying to do (i.e., make us laugh through the tears) or if the actors aren’t working with what they’ve got.

The play opens with Sebastian, a tall, brooding mess of a man played by Rob Klein (MSB `09), rushing through an explanation of his mother’s sudden death before being accosted by his estranged twin sister, Bernadette (Lauren Reese COL `12). The actors appear awkward, though not the kind of awkward you would associate with alienated relatives and unexpected funerals. The pair of siblings rush through their lines, letting jokes fall flat, while the plot struggles to catch up.

Reese delivers her lines in the same strained tone and hurried pace throughout most of the show, which detracts from the honesty and the humor of her character, a neurotic woman in a failing marriage who seeks comfort in alcohol. However, her caricature eventually softens, and she winds up being one of the play’s more realistic and likeable characters. Her performance is tempered by that of Steve Murray (COL `12), who plays her dentist-turned-artist husband, Kip. Murray delivers the most consistently entertaining performance of all the actors, due in no small part to the fact that he actually uses a variety of voice modulations.

The star of the production, however, is Jimmy Dailey (COL `11) who plays a charming, eloquent murderer whose letters from death row are Sebastian’s only consolation in the bleak world he’s created for himself. Dailey manages to glide from raunchy hilarity to savage honesty without breaking a sweat, and leads the audience to wonder, along with Sebastian, if people we love, or anyone, really, can be just “simply … bad.”

The play very vividly (even vulgarly) displays people’s desperate desire to spill their souls all over one another, and this purging of feelings comes at a cost. The overabundance of horrific themes serves to dull the impact of each confession and revelation. The play is rife with realistic moments that have the potential to resonate, but many are muffled by the actors’ impatience to get to the next line.

The play stumbles and shuffles along a path of sad remembrances and meditations, with some characters crumbling and others slowly breathing life into one another, until conclusions are quite tidily reached in the last few minutes of action. It’s a brave production and quite an undertaking by director HollyAnne Giffin (COL `10), but one leaves with the sense that it could’ve been something more.