REVIEW: Red Like Fruit is a Harrowing Account of Sexual Transgressions
Through 10/12 @ Bridge Street Theatre, Catskill
Photos by John Sowle
“We are all in favor of this story being told and I hope it is told in front of as many people as possible.”
Red Like Fruit by one of Bridge Street Theatre’s favorite playwrights, the Canadian Hannah Moscovitch, arrives at the Catskill house as A Susan Smith Blackburn Finalist and with an Edinburgh Fringe First Award for its two weekend run through 10/12.
Moscovitch previously wowed BST audiences with Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes (my favorite) and East of Berlin. Sexual Misconduct… went on to much greater fame with an off-Broadway run with none other than Hugh Jackman this past Spring. She is a very meticulous writer who builds suspense word by carefully-chosen-word imbuing the stage and the performance with fantastic tension.
Red Like Fruit deals with sexual behavior like her other plays but has a more daring construction as the play begins and the character of Lauren (a phenomenal Elisabeth Narciso) sets the space up, introduces herself to the audience and hesitantly introduces Luke (Johnny Travers) who will be reading her life story account for the audience. As the story begins describing Lauren in group therapy, Luke is reading this at a lectern with the house lights on and Lauren seated silently stage left.
Eventually, the lights dim and Luke moves away from the podium late in the play but Lauren is up and moving throughout the playing area which looks like an antiseptic Ted Talk stage with bright white lights, a functional modular stage of raised platforms upstage and not much else. Margo Whitcomb directs the actors meticulously and somehow makes the piece very active.
As Luke reads accounts of Lauren’s sexual past, Narciso responds to the words spontaneously. At times, she appears to be reacting to the events with shuddering, weeping or protectively turning away from the audience. Narciso is like an open wound as the story unspools. Travers handles the narrative with a steady deep voice and Narciso lives through the harrowing emotions of the sexual transgressions described.
Lauren had been sexually molested by a second cousin over a decade older than her when she was 17. The many details are recounted and become part of Lauren’s great hesitation at sharing these stories. She wonders what the difference is between trauma and these small things that happen that are just a part of growing up. “Shouldn’t we accept the ways in which we’ve been abused and not make such a big deal about it?” she wonders.
Clearly, with this story being told in a theatre with these exceptional actors—especially Elisabeth Narciso’s emotional X-ray of this character—we are all in favor of it being told and I hope it is told in front of as many people as possible.
Red Like Fruit plays through 10/12 at Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill. For tickets, please visit https://bridgest.org/
