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Facing East
AOL DIGITAL CITY Facing East, from playwright Andy
Sarouhan, covers familiar territory, but with a twist. Four friends living
together try to come to terms with "becoming men," but with a darker tone
that befits the men's obsession with writer Ernest Hemingway. The characters
continually refer to Hemingway and his writing, using his classically
macho but ultimately tragic ideals on masculinity as reference points
for their own struggles. Jocelyn Brown, who helmed the piece at its world
debut at San Diego University, again directs for these performances.
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ANAHEIM HILLS NEWS What a mess! "Facing East" is the story of Lost Boys crying out for a firm woman's hand, mother, sister or wife. Adrift in a Kurt Cobain-like world of grunge, sturm and drang, playwright Andy Sarouhan depicts the empty lives o a post-college foursome cohabitating in scum. The malodorous pad is rented for practically nothing to Aram's dad. Aram, Armenian-American, works for a sex shop and indulges in trichotillomania, the idle pastime of plucking one's hair, in this case, off his chest, in classic morbid preoccupation with self-inflicted pain. Philosophically minded Seth is on of the roommates, chillin' on the couch with his buddy. Pretty boy Mikey is addicted to the memory of his erst-girlfriend Connie, who unceremoniously dumped him. He sleeps his woes off most of the day, and occasionally wakes up to listen to her curt parting message and study her fading picture, kept under lock and key, for his own good, by Seth. Rounding out the foursome is Phinny, a writer wannabe challenged by a massive case of writer's block which even prolonged meditative sessions on the throne of the toilet will not cure. Mikey briefly recovers from his obsession when preparing for a date, relinquishing the formidable power of hanging on to the elusive memory of a former relationship and idealizing it from across time and distance. Seth and Aram discover the joy of their bodies as hobbies, with piercing and tatooing. The script is peppered with the plentiful profanity of the young and disaffected, and its existential rantings wink at various serious writers, obviously, an eminently referred to Ernest Hemingway, but Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller and Antoine de Saint-Exupery also come to mind. These young men are on the scabrous end of the Gen X-ers, with the time on their hands to obsess over the meaning of life after the orgiastic, carefree years of high school casual sex, and before being caught up in the endless rounds of futility inherent to adulthood's ratrace with ineluctably end up in death. Luckily - or is it so? - maturity brings the wisdom to resign oneself to and accept such fatalism, even with relief as infirmities begin to destroy physical bodies and finally long for a spiritual communion into an eternal hereafter, whether conscious or not, depending on one's religious beliefs. The piece has moments of great introspective clarity, such as the concept of home, what it represents, the safe nest of childhood with one's parents, where one lives, what one creates, or an illusion one yearns for but can never truly grasp or return to. In the end, home is an RV, a solution many a retiree has found, and many a hippy lived in the ubiquitous VW bugs of the Woodstock era. Aram embodies the plight of the Armenians, whose diaspora has created an important culture in the States. Aram's hostile reaction to skinheads reminds us never to become complacent about the threat of pogroms and ethnic cleansings. It's too easy to forget, especially for the young generations who have never been exposed to atrocities. The theme of the play within a play within a play is etched out by Phinny, a participating recorder of the drama, and the mysterious, silent landlord Toes who records from a distance. The trick of theatrical reality is to make private lives public by the writer for the audience and through the eyes of the critics. The overall impression, however, parallels the sloth and sloppiness of the protagonists. It is unclear which direction the plot is following or what lessons are to be learned from these young men. Perhaps simply that each generation makes the same mistakes, needs to learn from them independently from its elders, and eventually comes of age as a new wave grows up which wasn't even born when older folks were acting out the meaningful moments of their lives. And that in the end, most of us will pass on unremembered once our contemporaries have left too. The only ticket to earthbound eternity is the fame of a Hemingway, the living on through collective memory due to one's special achievements. Facing East is an allegory of our communal human experience
of a lifelong journey from birth to death, from the East in the dawn of
our days, to the Western sunset we all face. We can longingly look back
to an intangible childhood but need to grow up and accept our human nature
with its possibilities and limits. The Chance is faithful to its mission
to bring challenging material to the scene. Its very eclecticism means
there is something there for everybody, from classics to avante garde.
Casey Long as Seth is the most convincing of the young men, most of whom
are relative newcomers to the stage.
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