Shortly before the first act of Lee Blessing’s “Two Rooms” ended, these are the questions that occurred to me: has the distance from the hostage crises in the Beirut of 1988 to now, four and a half years into the war in Iraq, inured us to political drama“ Especially now, when it is the Americans taking hostages and keeping them there for years in Guantanamo? And, is it possible to for an audience to empathize with a man who tells of his torture over a three-year period (the play spans two) without showing the torture?
By the end of the play, I had my answers. “Two Rooms” is a deeply flawed play, but given an excellent production by the Roust theatre company, boasting fine performances. Any fault must lie with the play, not the players.
Michael (Joe Osheroff, very fine) , an American professor at Beirut University, has been taken hostage by an unknown faction. His wife Lainie (Tracy Hostmyer, heartbreakingly good), is back in their home in Washington, and has “cleansed” one room, her husband’s former office, into a cell of sorts: this is the closest she can get to her husband’s experience of loneliness and isolation. She is visited periodically by two outsiders: Ellen (Tori Davis, great in a difficult part), a government official working on her case, and Walker (Garrett Lee Hendricks, all swagger in swell clothes), a journalist, who desperately wants an excusive interview with her. There are dream sequences, which permits Michael and Lainie to talk to and touch one another; Michael even appears to Ellen, though this does not move her.
Lainie is the heart of the play, and though Michael is the catalyst, everything revolves around her. She controls the order of the room: who is allowed in and out of it, and how long they are allowed to stay. Getting nowhere with Ellen, she agrees to an interview with Walker. But really Walker and Ellen are stereotypes: one-note parts that give the actors nowhere to go because the writing does not let them. Ellen remains the soulless government spokesperson throughout; one might think she and Lainie would develop some sort of a relationship after three years of weekly visits, but Ellen must tow the soulless line to the very end of the play. No heart in her whatsoever. She even gets a little scary, accosting audience members at the beginning of Act 2, which evolves into a lecture that has no particular point: what does it mean to be an American? The answers don’t matter, because her lecture will always be the same: defending the policies of the United States, regardless of what it means to be an American. Walker is the high-strung, ambitious journalist, and the same question arises: wouldn’t some kind of a relationship develop between he and Lanie after years of contact? A friendship, even a shaky one? Lainie does not talk to anyone else: she rattles around in one room alone, or studies birds in her marsh. Walker is not allowed to change either; every time their meeting approaches difficult territory, Lainie tells him to go.
I can’t say enough about Tracy Hostmyer’s Lainie: she carries the play, and her suffering, worn her sleeve (her husband’s sleeve, actually; in a nice touch, she wears his shirt for most of the play), is palpable. She also has moments of rage, radiance, and great tenderness. Joe Osheroff’s Michael has the most thankless part: he has to tell what it is like in captivity. He has to tell the audience about beatings and is hampered by lines like “ The guard told me I had been here for three years.” Right, because how else to show the passage of time, other than to tell the audience? The play would actually work quite well without the character of Michael – then we could really see the loneliness and isolation of Lainie. It is also problematic that Michael, though he is a university professor, granted, seems to get more articulate, not less, after three years of solitary confinement, beatings, and relocations.
It was an unfortunate choice for the director, James Phillip Gates, to explain, before the curtain went up, why “Two Rooms” was still relevant today. The play must stand on its’ own, and speak for itself. It matters not that hostages are rare now, because they are no longer necessary in the world of the suicide bomber. It matters not that now, if taken, hostages are filmed being beheaded. What matters is the universality of the plight of the people involved, whether it was twenty years ago or two hundred. Because three out of four of Blessing’s characters are not fully fleshed out, three-dimensional people, “Two Rooms” feels dated, and lacks the power to matter.
