FOOL FOR LOVE' SETS ITS OWN RULES AT BEOWULF ALLEY
by Chuck Graham
TucsonStage.com
On its own, love has no substance. It only exists if we believe it exists. If we don't believe love exists, then poof, love turns itself off like a burned out light bulb.
Sam Shepard pursued this thought in depth when he wrote 'Fool For Love,' the new show by Beowulf Alley Theatre Company. May (Jessica Lea Risco) and Eddie (Daved Wilkins) hate each other, then hate themselves for loving each other, They can't help it. Just like the legendary bite of the Gila monster -- the more they try to pull free, the tighter they hang onto each other.
'Fool For Love' is a one-act, one-set show. Mike Sultzbach as director tosses his cast of four into a cheap motel room that becomes an emotional pressure cooker with faded paint. Actually, just three people are in the room. Dan Higgins as the Old Man sits rumpled and slouched off to the side of the stage in an equally weary chair.
Looking rustic and raw boned as a split-rail fence, the Old Man becomes the conscience of the piece. Clearly, his attitudes are from an older generation, valuing the slower pulse of a much different drummer.
May and Eddie are members ot the modern cowboy culture. They're ornery and independent as any old cowboy, but May and Eddie don't have a cowboy's eye for the horizon. They lack the patience to put up with a bone-jarring journey like a cattle drive.
They prefer in-your-face action -- and quick results. If it takes too much thinking or waiting, they get frayed with frustration. As the play opens, May and Eddie keep shouting at each other. Like two scorpions in a bucket all they can do is attack.
May is as defiant as she is insecure. The sort of winner who would apologize for making her opponent feel like such a loser. Eddie is the type who will shoot first and apologize later. At first they can't decide if they will even stay together. She accuses him of having a wealthy girlfriend. Then they can't decide, if they are going to stay together, where they should settle down.
By the time May admits she has a boyfriend who is coming to her motel room, Eddie goes ballistic.
That fellow is Martin (Eric Smith). A gentle giant with a warm heart, he just wants to do what is right -- if he only knew what that was. First Martin attacks Eddie, throwing him to the floor. Then Eddie, sensing Martin's uncertainty, begins making fun of Martin.
Then the play gets down to what it is really all about.
All four actors gave excellent performances on opening night. This is not an easy play to pull off, being full of inner tension that keeps ratcheting up the ante, making every confrontation another round of poker players' bets and challenges.
'Fool For Love' was first presented in 1983, set on the edge of America's southwestern civilization. Shepherd was always trying to find a place for old cowboy values in the New West. His connection with both cutltures is made clear by Beowulf Alley's decision to give the play an opening act.
Bill Black, a cowboy poet and student of contemporary psychology, opens each evening reciting humorous poems that remind us how this part of the United States was built by individuals of unique character. Eastern intellectuals, Southern gentlemen and solid Midwesterners were not in the equation.
Men and women like May and Eddie headed west because they didn't belong anywhere. We feel that need to stay in motion in Bill Black's poems. We meet the ramifications of it in 'Fool For Love.'
