Beck Center’s superb ‘Really Really’ puts the “I” in iPhone
By Bob Abelman
In the tragicomical “Really Really,” which premiered at Washington D.C.’s Signature Theatre in 2011, 26-year-old playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo puts his own entitled, self-centered generation on display. And it isn’t pretty.
The play opens with a wonderfully wordless scene in which inebriated, short-skirted upperclassmen Leigh and Grace (the riveting Molly Israel and Rachel Lee Kolis, respectively) return to their campus apartment after an epic kegger.
While Grace’s 90-proof exhilaration lapses into regurgitation, Leigh is busy reflecting on the drunk sex she had that evening, the consensuality of which will be the plot point that drives this play’s drama.
What compels this play’s comedy can be found in the testosterone-saturated party apartment of the brash and braggadocious Cooper (a disarmingly likable Chris Richards) and the more studious and sensitive Davis (the charming Daniel Scott Telford).
They, too, are recovering from the evening’s festivities and upon the arrival of rugby teammates Johnson (an intense Jack Schmitt) and Jimmy (Randy Dierkes, in an understated but effective performance), recount their conquests by engaging in the playfully profane wordplay and frat-boy preoccupation with sex that dominates each conversation and defines their relationships.
As the hormones and booze subside, so does the humor as what happened that night between Leigh and Davis is given closer examination. Well, as close as possible considering that the sex in question occurred behind closed doors before the audience took their seats and when everyone on stage was under the influence. Davis doesn’t remember a thing. Leigh remembers saying “no.”
Accusations become legal actions. Friendships are challenged. And looking out for Number One goes from being a catchy mantra for Generation Me to really intriguing theater on the Beck Center’s intimate Studio Theater stage.
The playwright cleverly builds the tension by keeping most of the action within these two apartments and shifting from one to the other with increasingly rapid succession.
Scenic designer Cameron Caley Michalak makes these shifts silent and seamless by having one apartment morph into the other by way of a rotating platform that swaps out the girls’ kitchenette for the boys’ living room.
Director Donald Carrier sees these set changes as a theatrical opportunity and allows departing characters in the previous scene to share just a fleeting moment and some intense eye contact with arriving characters in the scene to follow.
Carrier and his cast actually take advantage of every moment in the script and always find something interesting to offer. And because this play is not without its faults, they often come to its rescue.
Rather than simply allowing the play’s overriding theme of generational self-absorption to reveal itself organically through dialogue, which it does, the young playwright clobbers us over the head with a scene in which Grace delivers a passionate, bullet-pointed speech at a meeting of the conservative Future Leaders of America.
Fortunately, this allows the exceptionally talented Kolis to showcase her skills as she milks the melodrama and allows the speech’s irony to bubble to the surface.
And rather than allowing the play’s comedy to bow out to make way for the intense drama, Colaizzo introduces us to Leigh’s white-trash sister, Hayley (Olivia Scicolone), who comes to visit so to reap some of the financial benefits her sister is sure to generate by accusing a rich boy of rape.
Some really fine acting keeps Hayley from being merely distracting comic relief. And by portraying her as the only character without an ounce of pretense, Scicolone helps expose the sexual politics being played out in this production.
“Really Really” had a twice-extended run Off-Broadway in 2013. It will not be surprising if the Beck Center production follows suit.
On Stage
WHERE: Beck Center for the Arts, 17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood
WHEN: Through July 2
TICKETS & INFO: $12 – $31, call 216-521-2540 or go to beckcenter.org
Bob Abelman covers professional theater and cultural arts for the Cleveland Jewish News. Follow Bob at Facebook.com/BobAbelman3. Ohio AP Media Editor’s best columnist.
Originally published in the Cleveland Jewish News on June 3, 2017.
Lead image: Daniel Scott Telford and Molly Israel. Photo | Andy Dudik
