"VINTAGE RED AND THE DUST OF THE ROAD," Visions & Voices Theatre Company at Strawdog Theatre
BY LUCIA MAURO
Playwright Robert Koon admirably refuses to succumb to the romantic allure of wine country. And in his exquisitely anguished drama, "Vintage Red and the Dust of the Road," he unpeels with an artful delicacy the sour grapes of dysfunction that plague a Napa Valley vintner dynasty. His work is receiving its world premiere by Visions & Voices Theatre Company in a flawless production potently directed by Anna C. Bahow at Strawdog Theatre.
Koon has honed his writing to a perfect blend of uncontrivance and unforced metaphor. His "split-stage" convention of having the lead character, Ted, interact in two different time zones with his California family and Irish-born girlfriend Niamh in Chicago effectively magnifies this man’s suffocating and surreal detachment from his kin. Niamh, Ted’s much younger amour, represents the close knit familial bonds of unconditional love. Together, they render ambiguous the notion of age equaling wisdom.
Ted is at the conflicted center of "Vintage Red," a play that acknowledges the hopelessness of a family unwilling to shed its tough, guarded skin. The fortyish Ted, the heir of a California vineyard, has escaped this regimented life of social expectation to pursue a career as a freelance photographer in Chicago. He lives with the 24-year-old Niamh, a relative of an Irish pub owner.
But he is quietly crushed by a solemnity and restlessness – spurred on by the news that his father – the immovable family patriarch – has died. Told simultaneously in flashbacks to the funeral and Ted’s present-day recounting of the incident to the caring, confused and wizened Niamh, "Vintage Red" is blistering in its portrayal of someone living daily with the guilt of abandoning his family to gain a semblance of personal sanity. Ted was simply on to his father’s "well-meaning" but self-interested game of maintaining the sham of success and civility.
When Ted returns home, he shakily re-connects with his brother Van – a former Marine disabled in a freak accident. Van ran full-force through a sliding glass door while racing a fellow Marine. He lost his eye and the use of his right arm. Most devastating, his father condemned him for his stupidity. He would have been more sympathetic had the once-heroic Van been wounded in battle.
Ted’s greatest antagonism lies with his achingly unfulfilled sister Karen, who runs the vineyard. In denial over everything – from her sexuality to her father’s love (he really preferred his sons to run the business) – she opts to bury herself alive in work, her spirit a repressed cold stone. Ted also must confront his ex-wife Dana, the childhood sweetheart he later discovered was part of the illusion of normalcy his father conjured.
One of the few plays to address the gaping hole of misunderstanding and denial at the heart of many families, "Vintage Red" dares to lament the waste of such precious potential and joy. In a performance of profound gravity and sympathy, Kelly Van Kirk makes us feel his knotted conscience and the empty pit in his stomach. He is a man alone – unconnected to his roots yet fully aware of the unrelenting vagaries of nature.
The playwright, in showing the unforgiving environment of Ted’s background, wisely does not take sides – choosing instead to reveal the damage done to the others, each one fermenting with inexpressible resentment. No one demonstrates that quality more powerfully than Elizabeth Rich as Karen. There’s an anxious, tension-strangled bitterness to her every gesture and inflection. One wishes she would burst into tears; uncork her anguish. But the devastating truth is that she will never free herself from an insidious anger that has engulfed her like a cancer.
Paul Noble’s Van takes on several understated dimensions – ennui, disappointment, self-pity and the frustration of an injured man who longs to rekindle the connection he once shared with his wayward brother. As Dana, Michelle Courvais delivers a lyrically measured performance; and Lisa Stevens’ almost mythic Niamh lends a gentle tone of inevitable loss to the production.
Ryan Hall’s distressed wine-cellar set takes on a beautifully corroded hue through Carrie Hill’s sepia-brown lighting – an image that echoes Koon’s sepulchral words about wine breathing, aging and maturing like us. It has the ability to fortify, uninhibit, let us get back in touch with the past – or unleash the secrets of life and death. Koon even compares the wine barrels, with their years chalked on, to head stones.
Is there truth in wine? Koon takes the bold step of exploring an enologist clan’s full-bodied denial of the truth – the victims of an unspoken poison that ultimately destroys the brittle vines of their family tree.•
Visions & Voices Theatre Company’s production of "Vintage Red and the Dust of the Road" runs through December 22 at Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway. Tickets: $12-$15. Call 773-506-4542 or log onto www.visionsandvoices.org.
