Theater Review:
"JUMP TO COW HEAVEN" at Profiles Theatre
BY LUCIA MAURO
Profiles Theatre, which has built a solid reputation for thrusting its ensemble into perilous dramas that feature misunderstood anti-heroes, continues the high-octane pattern. For some time, the company centered on hard-hitting American rural themes, then moved on to what’s becoming a steady Profiles trademark: contemporary working-class British plays with rage-engorged characters.
Gill Adams’ "Jump to Cow Heaven" treads such brutal and desperate ground as it dramatizes the bursting-at-the-seams claustrophobia of an escaped con hiding out in a basement flat with his nerve-shattered guardian and sympathetic prostitute in London’s swank but grisly East End. Profiles snared the U.S. premiere rights and even flew in the playwright for opening night.
The story – based on the real-life springing of Frank "The Mad Axe Man" Mitchell from Dartmoor Prison in 1966 – wrestles with some engagingly ambiguous moral dilemmas, most noticeably one man’s ability to be a sadistic lunatic and a lover of small animals (even though Frank’s unawareness of his own strength once caused him to squeeze his own budgie to death). But it is this rather worn notion that hampers a play too conscious of its own gagging claustrophobia.
What happens off stage, in a chilling way, gives this work its gravitas – as long as the audiences can get past all the grunting and screaming. Frank has long been considered a pawn of London’s paradoxical gangster twins – Reggie and Ronnie Kray – who dominated the Dickensian labyrinth of the Swinging Sixties’ East End. They wined and dined with celebrities while living a life of crime (including a few cold-blooded murders) and eventually ended up in prison and in a hospital for the criminally insane, respectively.
But we never meet the Krays in "Jump to Cow Heaven." Their ruthless mystique haunts – and taunts – the small drama playing out before our eyes. Reggie and Ronnie are believed to have masterminded Frank’s escape, promising the dim and demented fellow a home in the country. The Krays, however, used Frank to lure the London authorities into a massive manhunt. The escaped con was one of their more elaborate means of thumbing their noses at what they considered an outmoded British establishment incapable of fathoming organized crime.
We meet Frank – still wearing a number and clutching a radio -- shortly after he tries to settle into the small basement flat. His gargantuan mood swings cause his alcoholic caregiver John – a nervous flunky employed by the Krays – to constantly appease the burly killer. Frank – whose obsession with washing rivals that of Lady Macbeth’s – grows anxious for an escape of another sort: a fleeing to the country away from this cramped hideout, which is just another prison cell.
Lisa, one of the Krays’ hookers, arrives to calm Frank down. The two fall into a desperate, inexplicable love that seems to grow out of utter hopelessness. And Lisa’s saga turns out to be far more wrenching than Frank’s (for whom sympathy – apart from his being deceived – is difficult to impart). She also remains under lock-and-key by the Kray twins and has nowhere to turn. Lisa, we discover, early on, is pregnant. By the end, a possible miscarriage thrusts us deep into the gory horrors of this faux-glam underworld hell. John, another doomed lackey, seems to wither away.
Director Mitch Golob’s sweaty and visceral production certainly magnifies Frank’s rabid impatience – most powerfully exhibited in Darrell W. Cox’s near hyper-ventilating grunts and growls. Fortunately, Cox mines some of the script’s sly sense of humor through a combined innocent wild-animal persona so that Frank has more dimensions. But Cox’s excessive chest-pounding and pacing serve as the metaphoric ax Frank uses to hit the audience over the head with his frantic urgency to get out.
Another too-literal symbol is the sea of red balloons decorating the apartment for Christmas. Lisa even goes so far as to regretfully say, "I should have let him [Frank] burst all his balloons." We also can argue that Frank is being led, like a cow (who aspires to jump over the moon and into an idyllically anonymous existence), to the slaughter.
Joe Jahraus’ simultaneously terrified and bored John is Cox’s subtly complex foil. But their scenes drive us too far into these men’s sadistic and giddy sparring matches rather than push us out into the larger – and more significant -- message of all the characters’ psychological and obligatory prisons. Sara Maddox as Lisa graciously balances the jittery and maniacal timbre of the play. We truthfully experience the arc of her intelligent but suppressed character.
In "Jump to Cow Heaven," we’re showered with too many blatant metaphors. Yet the leads pulling the strings – the Kray twins – are never seen. Their crushing machinations, however, most jarringly hover over this play. If only Adams could tone down the script’s obvious elements, the presence of this harrowing invisible menace would be able to quietly creep into our bones.
Profiles wisely downplays the Austin Powers’ era and chooses to bring us closer to an East End crawling with well-dressed outcasts. But one’s silent cries are always more piercing than full-blown rage. Both script and production need to find that pungent stillness.•
"Jump to Cow Heaven" runs through November 10 at Profiles Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway. Tickets: $18-$22. Call 773-549-1815 or log onto www.Profilestheatre.org.
