`Lonely Planet': Stage play at its best
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What: 'Lonely Planet'
Where: Hippodrome State Theatre
When: 8:15 Tuesdays-Fridays, 5 & 8:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sundays, through Nov. 12
Tickets: $10-$23
A review
By ARLINE GREER
Sun theater critic
Possibly, if you were told that "Lonely Planet" is an AIDS play, you'd think, "Dreary topic. Not for me." And possibly if you were told the Hippodrome State Theatre's new drama has just two characters who are gay men, you'd put the lid on your decision. Finally, if someone used familiar cliches to describe Stephen Dietz's "Lonely Planet" as "a dark comedy celebrating the triumph of the human spirit," you'd run in the opposite direction.
You'd be making a big, big mistake.
"Lonely Planet" is a beautifully written, provocative, funny, absorbing play with an original perspective. It doesn't deal just with AIDS or gay men. In fact, you're hardly likely to be tuned into those aspects of the play until its second act is firmly in place. "Lonely Planet's" major focus is on friendship and the improbable ties that bring together people who seemingly are disparate types. With marvelous humor, its dialogue and story trace the unlikely friendship between two men (who could just as easily be straight as they are gay) with a dramatic progression that's totally engrossing and ultimately moving. No mean feat for a two-character play.
"Lonely Planet" takes place in Jody's map store, where the virtues of the Mercator map are compared to Peter's Projection map. Jody's affinity for maps comes from his need to have fixed, unchanging facts in his life. "Maps tell us what we need to know," he says.
Jody's fixed world is shaken when Carl enters, carrying a chair which he plunks on the floor. It is one of dozens and dozens he will bring to Jody during the course of the play. Carl is a quirky character who seemingly has many jobs, or maybe none at all. He tells of his work as a museum art restorer, glass repairman, fingerprint duster, newspaper reporter, and auto shop worker. He makes it up as he goes along, or does he?
Jody attempts to punch holes in Carl's stories, but Carl refuses to be deflated. His outrageous tales give rise to even more outrageous tales, one funnier than the other. (In one particularly frenzied fit of inventiveness, Carl gives a hilarious account of a housewife who sees the face of Jesus in a dish she's washing. This one is truly worthy of tabloid reporting.)
The men develop a friendship balanced between Jody's agoraphobic need, and Carl's forays into an outside world filled with the grief of friends who have died of AIDS. One by one, Carl carries his dead friends' chairs to Jody's store, bringing the world home.
For his part, Jody tells Carl his dreams, dreams in which he always is pushed into situations to which he feels unequal. No, he's not a fireman, he can't save the trapped victims in the burning building. No, he's not a prize- fighter thrust into the ring before a gargantuan opponent. Always, Carl is there, not helping.
The humorous give-and-take between the two goes on throughout the play. It is laced with observations about human behavior, the serendipity of friendship, the cruelty of a world which only sympathizes with so-called "innocent" sufferers of AIDS, those who are not involved in an inappropriate lifestyle. There's no self-pity here, just matter-of-fact acknowledgment and sadness. The drama's conclusion is beautiful, moving and altogether fine art.
Artful too, is the acting of the two-man cast. Rusty Salling, the quirky Carl of multicareers, has never done finer acting than he does here. Laboring under his great clutter of disparate chairs, expounding on his work restoring a painting, prodding Jody to get tested, mourning the deaths of ordinary people, he is simply superb.
Traber Burns as Jody is no less so. The more reflective member of the twosome, Burns gives moving accounts of his need for maps, his memory of a first love affair, and his dreams -- particularly his final dream, an affirmation of friendship so moving as to make you weep.
Mary Hausch's direction of "Lonely Planet" makes for a flawless production. James Morgan designed the inviting set of a map store. Marilyn Wall-Asse is responsible for the costumes. Lorelei Esser is a charge of properties, including a truly eclectic jumble of chairs.
Don't let any classification of "AIDS play" put you off. The Hippodrome's "Lonely Planet" is theater at its best.`
