Actor, director, multi-award winning playwright Sam Shepard was in the 1970s and 1980s the most fashionable playwright in the USA and abroad, his edgy, surrealistic plays dissecting some very uncomfortable social and family issues in bare-bones naturalistic dialogue. -- Alas, none of his plays have been performed in the River Region for decades: our loss.
But now, Theatre AUM [true-to-form in producing plays from across a wide international and stylistic spectrum] is bringing Shepard's compact Fool for Love to their stage. In a seedy Mojave desert motel, we meet May [Sam Crevensten], and Eddie [Samuel "Goose" Alford]; they are half-siblings and on-and-off lovers for about fifteen years, and while Eddie obsesses their relationship can be resumed, May wants nothing to do with him; in fact, she's expecting her date Martin [Nicholas Hall] any minute.
The fourth character is The Old Man [Jay Walker Russell] who fathered both May and Eddie with two different women, and who had abandoned them some time ago; he serves as a kind of narrator-conscience as he sits outside the action though he "communicates" with his children individually as his attempts to assuage his building guilt consumes him. The past haunts the present.
Eddie is also being stalked by his most recent lover, the unseen "Countess', who wreaks havoc on Eddie's truck in the parking lot.
There's a lot of tension in the one-hour stage time, and the actors give credible renderings of their roles. Ms. Crevensten -- a late addition to the cast -- gave an admirably intelligent interpretation on opening night, despite reading from the script she held in her hands. [While this has been done before, there is no doubt that holding a script inhibits physical movement and eye-to-eye contact with scene partners, and hence the rhythms and intensity of the dialogue, as well as the emotional impact on the audience.] -- Expectations are high that she will be off-book soon to ensure her talents are better displayed for future performances.
