Now Aerenson returns to Coral Gables from his current residence in New York City for the world premiere of When Cuba Opens Up at Florida Shakespeare Theatre. His homecoming boasts impressive trappings: Burt Young, nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his brother-in-law role in the film Rocky, stars under the direction of off-Broadway veteran Bill Hart. But talented collaborators and sudden acclaim do not alter the fact that Aerenson remains an emerging playwright subject to a novice's missteps; in the case of When Cuba Opens Up, meaningless exchanges, unexplained actions, and meandering subplots overwhelm the play's few genuinely moving moments.
Framed by majestic palms in set designer Paul Mazer's evocative low-rent Miami Beach hotel room, the drama opens with Timmy (Burt Young) and Wayne (Greg Zittel) making themselves at home. Long-time partners in crime, the two middle-aged thieves bicker like an old married couple. When not picking apart the past, they argue about their futures as semilegitimate businessmen supplying goods to Cuba once the U.S. trade embargo ends. Worried he can't stay out of jail until then, Timmy opts for a midlife career change and becomes a pool boy at a posh golf/spa resort, leaving Wayne to hook up with a new partner, Johnny (Leo Marks).
Soon the two old cronies are sharing tales about their respective work days: Timmy has trouble adjusting to the honest life; Wayne frets that he's too old to keep up with 28-year-old Johnny on their residential breaking-and-entering sprees. As the play reaches its climax, Johnny's plan to use Timmy as his lookout for rip-offs at the resort tests the roommates' friendship, and the aroused suspicions of a police detective (Steve Wise) threaten the older felons' liberty.
The opening-night audience warmed to the Miami references sprinkled throughout the play, howling at Wayne's complaint about local drivers: "You can't beep -- the old people won't hear you and the Cubans will shoot you." Such wisecracks show that Aerenson possesses a promising comic touch, yet his decision to emphasize inconsequential robbery minutiae over the warm friendship of the aging outlaws results in an oppressively somber play.
Timmy's futile quest to turn over a new leaf is poignant, evident especially in the quiet pride and delight he takes in ironing the uniform he wears for his new job. But Timmy's newfound optimism turns to defeated helplessness when Wayne shatters his dreams by endorsing Johnny's scheme to move in on the resort. An accomplished character actor, Young seems unwilling to dominate the stage as the production's star, instead basing his portrayal on Timmy's reactions to those around him. While his approach illuminates the relationships between the characters, only a genuine star turn could enliven the play's tiresome plot devices.
As Wayne, Zittel dynamically provides the production's most cohesive performance: He engagingly transmits his small-time crook's enthusiasm for Johnny's promised big scores, and he gives a sympathetic portrayal of Wayne's disquietingly recognizable fear of aging. In the play's best-written scene, Wayne confides to Timmy that he has been having anxiety attacks and blackouts during his heists with Johnny. Afraid he's past his prime, Wayne reduces his risk of confrontation and arrest by preying on the elderly, but he's revolted to find that the incapacitated lives and antiquated homes of his victims make him feel worse. As his protege, Marks evolves from an outsider in Timmy and Wayne's clubby world -- impatient with rambling, tedious recollections -- to a desensitized hood who cruelly badgers Timmy.
Faced with the unevenness of this fledgling effort, director Hart could have better drawn on his past experience -- he served as dramaturg on the premieres of Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind and Simpatico, plus Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart -- to help clarify and shape Aerenson's work. In one bit of perplexing stage business, Timmy puts a fish bowl, complete with goldfish, into the kitchen freezer at regular intervals. In another, Timmy spends the majority of the play with his arm in a sling fashioned out of a necktie, even though he continues to display full use of his hand. Whether these are examples of Aerenson's unexplained in-jokes or Young's bad choices as an actor, Hart fails to control this self-indulgence. And that's not the worst of it. In what is undoubtedly the most unnecessary and repugnant scene performed on any local stage this season, Aerenson goes beyond the play's heavy use of scatological language to send the production into the toilet (literally) when he has the police detective interrogate Timmy and Wayne -- in between grunts! -- while he's seated on a slightly hidden off-stage john.
Although scouts from a number of the nation's top regional theaters are reportedly flying down to check out this premiere for possible future productions, only a major rewrite can save When Cuba Opens Up from swift closings.
Don't be misled by the country songs lamenting love gone wrong that waft over the sound system at the start of Sam Shepard's Fool for Love. His Obie Award-winning 1983 drama is really a jazz fugue that forgoes linear structure in favor of dizzying variations on the theme of love. Fort Lauderdale's CounterForce Actor's Studio gamely tackles Shepard's riffs in its inaugural production, but the company lacks sufficient virtuosity to cover the play's startling range and to deliver its electrifying high notes.
Running a little more than an hour with no intermission, Fool for Love opens in a motel room on the edge of California's Mojave Desert. That's where Eddie (Vincent Scotto) has tracked his on-again/off-again girlfriend May (Tanya Bravo) after she fled their trailer-park love nest during one of Eddie's frequent long absences. Consumed with passion since they were teenagers, the couple has spent fifteen years fighting their powerful attraction to each other, all the while knowing that a secret from their past will keep them apart forever.
An old man (John Saracco) watches their struggles from his rocking chair on the side of the stage, downing liquor he pours from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. Sharing deep ties with the two, he exists only in their memories, commenting on the action and engaging each in conversations the other can't hear. Weary and shell-shocked from their emotional war, the couple spill out their scandalous history to the bewildered and mild-mannered Martin (Steven Bockus), who arrives for what turns out to be a very ill-timed date with May.
One of Shepard's more accessible works -- although it still provides a few of his challenging enigmatic touches -- Fool for Love is a minor gem crafted to portray love's many faces: sexual, familial, blooming, possessive, seductive, destructive, nurturing, and, above all, everlasting. Carrying off Shepard's demanding drama is a tall order for a new company; in fact, Shepard chose to direct the work's off-Broadway premiere himself.
Under dialect coach Lee Dombrowski's tutelage, Bravo and Scotto impressively maintain Southwest accents, but they pay more attention to speaking Shepard's rhythmic dialogue authentically than to capturing its sexual tension. Saracco gives a well-rounded performance as the old man, mastering the character's feigned impartiality, which, ultimately, gives way to an overriding concern that his side of the story be represented. Daniel Chernau's direction ably weaves the old man into the main action, but Chernau follows a logical, straightforward tack that obliterates the play's surreal mood and quirky humor. Although a gallant first attempt, the CounterForce Actor's Studio's Fool for Love is a little too one-note to capture the beauty of Shepard's sensuous improvisations.
When Cuba Opens Up.
Written by Benjie Aerenson; directed by Bill Hart; with Burt Young, Greg Zittel, Leo Marks, and Steve Wise. Through June 21. For more information call 445-1119 or see "Calendar Listings."
Fool For Love.
Written by Sam Shepard; directed by Daniel Chernau; with Tanya Bravo, Vincent Scotto, John Saracco, and Steven Bockus. Through June 15. For more information call 576-4146 or see "Calendar Listings.
