Infinite Black Suitcase

Lewis, E.M. Infinite Black Suitcase. Moving Arts. LATC. 9/19/2005.

I love the title of this piece.

It was a workshop production of a new play, and I was glad to go out and see a new play, especially since I've been griping so much about the Taper's abandonment of its new play development. And by a woman no less!

It was quite entertaining, especially for a play about death. It features four interwoven storylines, which makes for a cast of 15, which seemed huge. New people, new stories, kept coming. It was so strange to be introduced to entirely new plots over halfway through the play that I felt a bit disoriented. Each storyline touched each other briefly, but I would have liked to see them come together more.

The strongest sections were the two storylines that appeared most frequently and were most strongly interwoven; I will call them Katie's story and Dan's story. Katie's story was about a woman (played by Laura Buckles) in the hospital dying of what was probably cancer. Her ex-husband, Joe (played by Ronnie Clark), and her current husband, Tony (played by Harry Du Young), were trying cope with losing her and to figure out how to share custody of Katie and Joe's children. Ronnie Clark's performance was excellent, especially in a scene in which he tried to date Mary (Daria Balling). The storyline in which Dan (Brian Wier) was dying (presumably of AIDS) and his boyfriend Stephen (Jeremy Gabriel) was trying to figure out how to go on was well-done, though the actors were quite evidently heterosexual so while their kiss was well done, their physicality with each other was generally awkward. Dan and Katie were friends in the hospital and shared their problems with each other as well, so these plotlines seemed the strength and the center of the play.