Orange County Premiere!

One Flea Spare
by Naomi Wallace
Directed by Patricia Terry

Back Stage West Critic's Pick

 

 

 

THEATER REVIEW

London during the plague of 1665 comes alive through visions of the Black Death
by Anne-Margret Bellavoine, Northern Lights

May 23, 2005

Naomi Wallace is first and foremost a poet in her 'One Flea Spare,' haunting with its sweetly lilting lines of yesteryears. Patricia L. Terry, in a welcome return from the former Alternative Repertory Theatre, directs the piece. The 1995 London hit received awards and rave reviews, and is a local premiere.

London in 1665 was a time when the world changed abruptly. The plague was symbolic of deeper tensions - religious, social, cultural and political. If the theme of John Donne's 'Flea' figures in the title, the play itself delves deeper into the psyche of its handful of characters.

The setting is William and Darcy Snelgrave's estate (Sean Hannaway and Heather Howe). The wealthy merchant gentleman and his subdued wife are quarantined for four weeks in two rooms of their boarded up home because the plague decimated their household of servants. Two unwanted visitors force the confinement to start anew, with sailor Bunce (Joshua Jones) and young girl Morse (Alex Bueno), who may or may not be who she claims to be. Seeing to their needs from the outside, and ensuring they do not escape, is Kabe (Warren Draper), a shrewd black marketeer.

The characters are merely pawns in the game of history playing itself out around them. In times of disaster, the human instinct for survival, and yearn for living up one's counted days to the fullest, causes a blurring of normal boundaries. Snelgrave's clothes make the man until Bunce dons them, turning the cards.

The couple's unsatisfied marital life takes on new urges as they explore dangerous, forbidden pleasures with their handsome guests. The evocative scenes of erotic arousal are as powerful as they are elegant. Even Kabe joins in on the action, eager to trade favors with Morse.

As Kabe brings food and alumets, the confined foursome lives out what might be their last days, yet still scheming for life after the ordeal has passed. Gender and class roles become meaningless as they rely on each other and realize the humanity which equalizes all in the face of catastrophe, a lesson humbling for the powerful, and empowering for the disenfranchised. Endurance of grief and loss in the face of AIDS, or any other disease when one becomes a social outcast, is as relevant today as in the days of the Black Death.

The cast gives superb performances in English accents coached by Glenda Morgan Brown. Period costumes are owed to Alia Amaya, with makeup design by Gary Christensen.

The sparse dialogue rings with poetic pathos in this unusually seductive and provocative historical piece.

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THEATER REVIEW

Flea-written
The Great Plague has never sounded lovelier
by Joel Beers, O.C. Weekly

May 26, 2005

Little of what transpires in Naomi Wallace’s One Flea Spare, receiving its Orange County premiere at the Chance Theater, is particularly noble; four people of questionable character quarantined during the Great Plague of 1665 isn’t a prescription for great deeds.

But what makes Wallace’s play so fascinating is that, although awash in death and corruption, so much life beats in its heart. That’s testament to both Wallace’s lyrically sensual writing and director Patrica L. Terry’s understanding that while every play should be heard, some—like this one—absolutely must be heard.

Wallace is English, but her writing sounds Latin. Sights, sounds, smells and tastes abound, even in the most jarring images: rats drinking the sweat of dying men; hearts snapping in two inside grief-stricken chests; a summer so hot the sick and the old melt into the street like snow. Her plot and characterizations don’t equal her poetics, but they don’t need to; this is a play in which what is being said is less important than how it’s being said.

William Snelgrave (Sean Hannaway) is a wealthy London industrialist quarantined with his wife, Darcy (Heather Howe), to ensure that neither carries a trace of the plague that killed two of their servants. Their time is nearly up when an itinerant sailor named Bunce (Joshua Jones) and a 12-year-old girl named Morse (Alex Bueno) sneak into their home. The local authority—a colorfully corrupt guard named Kabe (Warren Draper)—discovers the interlopers and gives all four another 28 days. It doesn’t take a belletrist to figure out that four very different people confined in a sweltering, stink-ridden home with nothing to do but be are going to wind up either killing or fucking each other. The only real question is who is going to do what to whom.

The play makes a strong case that the human body is the ultimate political battleground, and sexual currency the only kind every human possesses; how we spend ours makes us who we are. But there’s another message here, one borne out in the line, “Everyone leaves, even when they stay.” There is a universe of meaning in those six words. In this play’s context, with desperate people frantically clinging to life of some kind, it suggests that failed relationships, shattered unions, broken friendships and the infinitely exhausting cycle of lies we tell ourselves and each other might stem less from a place of weakness and dishonesty than one of frantic hope and that keening, heart-breakingly human thirst for passion and connection—even if manufactured by ourselves.

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THEATER REVIEW

'Flea' exerts a powerful tug
Review: Chance Theater's O.C. premiere of Naomi Wallace's play has heart, and humor, to spare.
by Eric Marchese, O.C. Register

May 27, 2005

The class system of many a European nation - particularly England - has been the subject of much literature for centuries, as novelists and playwrights pick apart the notion that an individual's fate is determined, at birth, by their "station" in life.

Take Naomi Wallace's "One Flea Spare," for example. The 1995 play is ostensibly about the effects of the bubonic-plague epidemic that swept London in 1665, causing authorities to enforce periods of quarantine. In Wallace's tale, one of these periods of involuntary imprisonment forces a wealthy couple to share their home with the daughter of an equally well-off neighbor and a rough-hewn seaman of the lower classes.

The script, which gets its Orange County premiere courtesy of the Chance Theater Repertory Company, derives considerable power from its exploration of the nature of privilege and deprivation and, even more striking, of the concept of isolation. Wallace makes no overt attempts to link her story and characters to issues surrounding the AIDS epidemic, yet she draws enough parallels to suggest that it wasn't far from her mind in writing "One Flea Spare."

During the horrendously hot summer of 1665, the upper-class Snelgraves, William (Sean Hannaway) and Darcy (Heather Howe), discover that 12-year-old Morse Braithwaite (Alex Bueno) and Bunce (Joshua Jones), a sailor, have been hiding in their cellar. In close confinement, as William puts Bunce to work as his servant, issues of class spring up immediately, and the Snelgraves' strained marriage opens the door for a seething, subtextual attraction between Bunce and Mrs. Snelgrave. The character of Kabe (Warren Draper), the plague guard assigned to patrol the Snelgraves' neighborhood, is the only link these four inhabitants have with the outside world, and all four use whatever means are at hand to bargain with him.

Within this tightly carved context, Wallace constructs a microcosm of society replete with enough concepts for 10 plays - wholly fitting in that the show's title is derived from a poem by John Donne, who specialized in densely packed metaphysical literature. Morse says she's the product of "the sliver of a star" - or, so her mother always told her.

Her father, meanwhile, was "born dead" - a reference to his cruelty, a theme Wallace repeats throughout "Flea." There's Snelgrave's cruelty to all in his sphere. There's the cruelty each individual must endure - Bunce, for example, describes watching his brother being crushed to death - and that of the universe, as demonstrated by the virulence of the plague, whose symptoms are described in graphic detail.

Director Patricia L. Terry and a skilled production team wed these themes to a believable exterior world of late 17th-century London, from Alia Amaya's visually arresting costumes and Gary Christensen's makeup design to Steve Grodt's set to Adam H. Greene's lighting and Dave Mickey's sound scheme. Terry and her extraordinary, well-chosen cast, aided by dialect coach Glenda Morgan Brown, then craft an inner world not terribly unlike our own, where most individuals crave love and acceptance irrespective of their material wants or needs, where human connections - even when they provide little - are far preferable to the terrifying prospect of being alone. The text's scarce moments of humor illuminate its deeper concepts, yielding a production with heart to spare.

Though you may not buy Bueno as a 12-year-old, her Morse is a waif caught between the somewhat artificial life of privilege led by the Snelgraves and the harsh realities of life represented by Bunce and Kabe, a girl in search of beauty even while emotionally hardened. Bunce is a paradoxical character worthy of Donne, one whose innate sensitivity is hidden by an unpolished exterior. Jones' vivid portrayal is of a British man of lowly birth who has endured hardship and ill fate his entire life, yet still presses on, saddened but never bitter. He's the play's voice of conscience, and an indelible voice it is.

With crisp, Oxford tones, Hannaway's William Snelgrave is a brittle hypocrite who preaches the Christian ethos even as his actions bespeak sadism - ironic, then, when he notes that fine clothing doesn't always equate to fine morals. Howe's Darcy traces the most moving arc: At first as pious and pompous as her husband, she's drawn to Bunce initially by her husband's neglect and her fantasy of Bunce as "bad," then by her recognition of William's callousness and Bunce's kindness. Next to Jones, she provides the staging's most touching moments.

Wielding a comically low Cockney dialect, Draper's Kabe is a cheerfully heartless mercenary who delights in the misery of others, convinced the plague is "a royalist plot" against the poor. The role's inherent hilarity offers welcome comic relief in a play dominated by bittersweet realism.

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THEATER REVIEW

One Flea Spare
by Shirle Gottlieb, Back Stage West

June 1, 2005

During the summer of 1665, London was exceedingly hot. Human waste in the streets attracted rats, which carried fleas that infected the populace. Not knowing the cause of Black Death or how to protect themselves from this dreaded disease, people were overcome by ignorance and superstition. Panic swept through the city, the rich fled to the country, authority broke down, and families with symptoms were locked inside their homes by ragtag ruffians who guarded the doors.

Influenced by this terrifying period of history, Naomi Wallace wrote a powerful allegory that has received numerous prestigious awards since 1996. Its title comes from John Donne's poem about a couple whose blood is commingled after a fleabite. But Wallace's drama is not about dying; it's about love and survival—about searching for answers while grappling with the wide array of factors that plague contemporary culture. In the tradition of Orwell, Brecht, and Miller, the story is set in another time while addressing the present. Patricia L. Terry understands this full well. Under her tightfisted, fast-paced direction, the five-member ensemble delivers its lines on both levels.

The social, religious, political, and health issues that beset Europe four centuries ago may be different, but cataclysms (AIDS, biological warfare, nuclear holocaust) still plague us. The action takes place in the boarded-up home of arrogant Lord Snelgrave (Sean Hannaway) and his obedient, browbeaten wife (Heather Howe). Just as their quarantine is about to be lifted, a runaway sailor and mysterious young girl break into their mansion seeking shelter. Joshua Jones is outstanding as Bunce, the tough lower-class seaman who knows a lot about survival. Echoing his performance is Alex Bueno, who excels as the adolescent who may not be who she says she is. When Kabe, the cunning guard, discovers new people inside the home, he extends the quarantine for another grueling month. Warren Draper provides strong comic relief as this illiterate, cold-hearted fool who revels in newfound power. How these disparate characters manage to survive unfolds in lyrical language and an explicit sexual subtext. This production deserves a wide audience, and it features lovely sound by Dave Mickey, lighting by Adam H. Greene, and costumes by Alia Amaya.

"One Flea Spare," presented by the Chance Theater Repertory Company at the Chance Theater, 5552 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim. Sat. 4 p.m., Sun. 6 p.m. May 21-Jun. 12. $17-35. (714) 777-3033.

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