A STAB AT FIXING
Anyone who has taken a play-writing class knows that without conflict, there is no drama. Gordon Hoffman’s new play, A Stab at Fixing, overflows with conflict. In it two couples confront all the sordid details of their relationships, from simple jealousy to infidelity to physical abuse. All of this nearly leads to murder.
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The play begins as Larry (E. Millard Jones) and Robbi (Christina Koehlinger) are out in the front yard of the apartment building where they both live, trying to start an old lawn mower. Soon Larry’s girlfriend May (Kim Ronkin) arrives home from work, and within a few lines Larry tells her that their relationship is over and that he wants her to leave. May responds by saying, “Your romantic notions of love will never work.”
Director Sherrod Hamlin’s seemingly random staging did little to clarify the dynamics of the play. Instead, her actors ran at a uniform speed for nearly the entire hour and a half. While the cast tackled the text with conviction, they seemed by turns overzealous and disengaged, as if unable to grab onto anything strong enough to pull them through the evening.
It’s not surprising that Transient Theatre’s production is mostly unfocused. The women turn in solid performances by and large–particularly Irene R. White as Pearl White and Deanna Leigh Schreiber as Queen Isabella–but the script is so full of tangents that it’s difficult for any momentum to develop. Director Steve Tanner’s staging is well conceived, the women planted around an enormous white table that severely restricts their movements, in effect reducing them to schoolchildren. But he allows a bit too much incidental business to muddy his stage picture; with so many characters onstage for the entire play, clean lines and a precise focus are essential to keep the viewer from feeling overwhelmed.
