Playwright Derek Ahonen stars as alcoholic playwright and anti-Marcello Mastroianni Douglas Evans in Amoralists world premiere (photo by Russ Rowland)
Walkerspace
46 Walker St. between Church St. & Broadway
Through August 9, $40 ($65 Gyre ticket package with Enter at Forest Lawn)
www.theamoralists.com
Amoralists cofounder and associate artistic director Derek Ahonen pays homage to Blake Edwards’s Days of Wine and Roses in his latest play, The Qualification of Douglas Evans. “Alcoholism isn’t funny,” Cara (Samantha Strelitz) says to Douglas (Ahonen), who responds, “I know, but it is when it is.” A moment later, she adds, “So booze is tragic,” to which Douglas replies, “Except when it’s not.” Writer and star Ahonen, who appeared in last year’s Rantoul and Die and has previously written and/or directed such works as The Bad and the Better and The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side for the always adventurous Amoralists, plays a kind of alternate-universe Marcello Mastroianni from Federico Fellini’s City of Women and 8½ in the two-and-a-half-hour tragicomedy about a wannabe playwright and his involvement with a series of women. Tormented by his mother (Barbara Weetman) and father’s (Penny Bittone) confusing relationship, Douglas first meets Jessica (Kelley Swindall), his sexually liberated acting-school classmate who has a fondness for oral sex. Next up is the cute and tiny Kimmy (Mandy Nicole Moore), his best friend’s (Bittone) girlfriend, who introduces Douglas to the bittersweet pleasures of alcohol. Third in the procession is Cara, who is playing Kimmy in Douglas’s first play, in which Douglas is starring as himself. The second act opens with Douglas on a blind date with the cheery and chipper Robin (Agatha Nowicki). And finally there’s Holly (Weetman), an agent played by the same actress portraying his mother. (Now, that’s casting.)
The Qualification of Douglas Evans takes place on David Harwell’s sparse stage, featuring a single object surrounded by doorways: a bed that swivels around and turns into a bench. Directed by company cofounder and artistic director James Kautz, the play roams between heightened levels of surreality and scenes of intense believability as Ahonen struggles through his alcohol-fueled life. The narrative delves further and further into the self-reflexive nature of art and the creative process, as playwright and actor Ahonen plays playwright and actor Douglas Evans, who at one point is playing himself in a play he wrote. Not everything works; Douglas occasionally experiences random, perplexing lightning flashes that scream through his head—but are never explained to the audience—and Ahonen and Kautz don’t know quite how to end the story, as the play goes on about twenty minutes too long. But Qualification is another triumph for the Amoralists, a unique and compelling look inside the bottle, love and sex, and theater itself, performed by an engaging cast. “You wrote a masturbatory play about your stupid relationship with some stupid girl and then you stupidly starred in it and were equally as bad at playing yourself as you were at writing about yourself,” Cara tells Douglas, continuing, “What do you want me to say? The truth hurts.” It’s all very funny, insightful, upsetting, freakishly weird, thought-provoking, and damn entertaining. Yes, the truth hurts. Part of “The Gyre” — “a two play repertory exploring man’s vicious cycles” — The Qualification of Douglas Evans is being performed in repertory with Mark Roberts’s Enter at Forest Lawn at Walkerspace through August 9.