Jennifer Chung Klam

San Diego Arts

Mo'olelo's 'Night Sky,' at the Mandell Weiss Forum Studio Theatre

Down the rabbit hole...
By Jennifer Chung Klam
Posted on Mon, Sep 8th, 2008
Last updated Mon, Sep 8th, 2008

Earlier this year, Mo’olelo was chosen as La Jolla Playhouse’s first Resident Theatre Company. Its first production at the Mandell Weiss Forum Studio Theatre is a moving and enlightening production of Susan Yankowitz’s “Night Sky.”

The night sky, with its vast empty spaces and hidden wonders, is a metaphor for Anna’s mind after a car accident renders her aphasic, a condition that leaves her at a loss to produce and comprehend language. The gaps in her language – likened to black holes – are filled with gibberish and mixed-up terms. It’s an especially tough blow for the too blunt, ambitious astronomer and lecturer, for whom words are both her job and her love.

Complicating matters is a tenuous relationship to boyfriend Daniel, a currently out-of-work opera singer who has found it near impossible to live up to Anna’s lofty expectations. At the center of her own solar system, Anna tends to treat her daughter and Daniel as minor satellites.

Seema Sueko gives a taut physical performance, making palpable Anna’s frustration with her condition. Shock and horror spread across her face at the realization that the words escaping her mouth are not the same words formed in her head; her hands punctuate the air when the words will not come; her eyes are stabbed with the pain of incomprehension. Sueko, at times too frantic in the role, is at her best in Anna’s most heartfelt and humorous moments.

Humor? Oh yes, despite its serious topic, Yankowitz’s script isn’t solemn. Anna’s reconstructed language is a delightful and funny mash-up of idioms, remembered phrases and malaprops. In answer to the question, “Where do you live,” Anna responds, “The Big New Yorpple.” “Fat pig” comes out instead of “guinea pig,” “impotent” instead of “important,” etc.

The play walks through Anna’s recovery, through the first days and subsequent months as her speech slowly improves. It is a gradual and painful reparation, too, of Anna’s relationships with Daniel and her daughter. Her fierce independence clashes with her need for their help and understanding.

Tom Andrew skillfully navigates Daniel’s emotional landscape, delineating the wide range of feelings experienced by the people who love and support – and sometimes resent – those they must provide care for. Bibi Valderrama, perhaps a little too young for the role, nevertheless is sassy and sweetly vulnerable as Anna’s perplexed tweenager dealing with her own changing body.

Nicole Gabriella Scipione lends a clinical air to her role as a speech therapist, and handles several other female characters. Brian Mackey provides some gentle laughs and fills in the recovery gaps as another aphasic patient at the hospital, along with other minor roles. Justin Snavely is appropriately tweedy in Jeannie Galioto’s fine costume design. He plays the role of absent-minded professor well, but his lectures don’t feel too scientifically authoritative.

Yankowitz’s script, like Anna’s mind, is a jumble of scenes and images. Anna’s family life is intercut with astronomy lectures and the speech therapy sessions of the other aphasic patient. The playwright mixes the pathos and humor of Anna’s struggle with poetic musings on the cosmos and the nature of language. The philosophical mumbo jumbo can get esoteric – Schrodinger’s cat, anyone? – but for the most part it all works, since the map of Anna’s mind has similarly become disjointed and esoteric.

Director Siobhan Sullivan smoothly connects these elements, so that the end result feels discordant yet cohesive. Jason Bieber’s lighting design includes the stars in that titular sky hanging over the stage as well as above the audience, and helps shift focus and move the action along David F. Weiner’s stadium bleacher-type set. Sound design by Paul Peterson effectively reproduces the cacophony of noises and words that overwhelm Anna.

With “Night Sky,” Mo’olelo continues its practice of producing poignant, socially conscious work, providing some insight into why La Jolla Playhouse chose Mo'olelo among nine local theater companies for the year-long residency. The company will produce one more play during its residency, in May.

About the author: Jennifer Chung Klam is an editor at The Daily Transcript and a freelance arts and culture writer.
More by this author.

Subscribe to Arts

 · 

Comments

Be the first to comment on this article.

(1)sandiego.com, Inc. invites comments in which readers can respond freely and anonymously if they wish. Comments submitted by readers will be rejected that are deemed by the editors to be damaging to the future of this web site.
(2)Comparison is made from the IP Address identity of the computer placing the posts. Some networks share these addresses between users.