Alone Together

Think about an elaborately painted urn. Then think about dropping it. It breaks, and the pieces scatter across the floor. The whole is irretrievable.

But if you examine one of the pieces you can, in your mind’s eye, reconstruct the whole that was from the fragment in your hand. If you examine a series of different shards, however, your reconstructions are likely to be similar but never identical.

In just such an examine-the-pieces manner playwright/director Ted Brengle’s intense, non-linear playlet Alone Together investigates the faltering relationship between Miranda (Courtney Maistros) and Walter (Josh Stamoolis). It begins with a brief confrontation that’s hyper-realistic in tone. Miranda is manic about choosing new colors to paint the apartment walls, and there’s an absurdist focus on a cardboard box full of junk. Lighting designed by Scott Hopkins shifts. Another confrontation. Whether it’s earlier or later in the relationship is unclear and doesn’t matter. The argument is mostly the same but slightly different.

Walter goes behind the couch, forgetting about and stumbling over a pet cat named Mischief who lurks back there. Then he does it again. A different incident? Or a different reconstruction of the same incident from an altered perspective? Again, unclear — and it doesn’t matter a damn’s worth. What matters is that Walter and Miranda have dropped the urn. The whole that was them is history, but they can’t get done examining the pieces.

Playwright Brengle, a master of arts candidate in Miami University’s theater department, has produced an accomplished piece of work. (Simultaneously with the Cincinnati Fringe Festival performances a different production of the piece is appearing in a one-act play festival in New York.)

One-acts are notoriously difficult to write. With the non-linear, reflexive structure well under control, he gives his characters interest and depth, sets up a situation, develops it, revealing more and more fragments of the failed relationship as he builds toward a climax, then closes out on a dying fall. All of that gets done in 36 minutes peppered with neat, tight accusations and regrets:

“Some people want to be an open book. I don’t.”

“For a while I made a difference for you.”

“No man ever really knows a woman, but I know you.”

Director Brengle has, on the other hand, fielded an uneven production on a makeshift set. The exigencies of Fringe-level production led to it, but it's often not the best idea for a playwright to direct his or her own work.

Here the pace is on the rackety side, and the performances are ill-matched. As Walter, Stamoolis (who was impressive throughout the last Cincinnati Shakespeare Company season, particularly in The Dumb Waiter) blends hurt, anger and longing into a fetching portrait of loss. As Miranda, Miami University student Maistros is chattery and flat, speed-reading along with little inflection, supplying too little fear to undergird the woman’s mania and too little warmth to create empathy. A firmer directorial hand might have fixed that. Grade: B

— Tom McElfresh