A Brief History of Helen of Troy
Hyde Park Theatre, through July 8
Running Time: 2 hrs, 10 min
The more powerless we become, the more we resort to brutality. We’d like to think merit counts, but the rich get much richer, and the rest of us poor schlubs get considerably poorer. The American Dream as once espoused by Horatio Alger doesn’t mean much to the wage slave working more and more hours and getting paid less and less for it. If you get a raise, it’s eaten up by increased insurance payments and increased energy costs and increased food prices. In a culture that values power and control above all else, the powerless masses need to feel empowered and in control, so we resort to brutality – in our games, in our entertainment, in our personal lives. No one turns the other cheek because we’ve all been slapped down so many times. It’s powerlessness that breeds brutality, and nothing makes an individual feel more powerless than confronting death.
Charlotte’s mother has died. Her name was Helen, and she was beautiful. Everyone says so. Charlotte’s father has retreated into a glass filled with whiskey and a television filled with nothing, and he only half-listens, if that, to his 15-year-old daughter, even when she’s threatening to leave. Often when he realizes what she’s actually saying, he brutalizes her emotionally and verbally, then slumps back into his easy chair. Charlotte’s only “friend” is Franklin, a young man who might or might not be gay, and Charlotte harangues him about it, needles him, brutalizes him. She is as alone as a girl possibly can be, so she creates a companion. Heather is attractive – well, by Charlotte’s standards, Heather is attractive – and she loves Charlotte, thinks Charlotte is pretty, thinks Charlotte can be anything she wants to be and have anything she wants to have. And what Charlotte wants is to be beautiful like Helen. To be loved. To be coveted. To be a porn star.
This Capital T Theatre Company production, directed by Mark Pickell and written by Mark Schultz, is one of those shows for which the term “bare bones” was created, so if you’re seeking production values, look elsewhere. But you’ll miss some fine acting. Kevin Jones gives a deceptively simple performance as a high school guidance counselor who actually is concerned about Charlotte but ends up as a central figure in one of her sexual fantasies. As a high school jock, Ryan Ciardo nails the juvenile superiority and privileged swagger these elite teenagers affect. Cara Cook turns in the most flamboyant and successful performance as the imaginary Heather, an uproarious, completely air-headed, and quite believable depiction of an appearance-obsessed teenage girl.
You’ll also miss a funny, sad, wise, ultimately human story. So strange to watch a play in which fellatio is performed on a young man who has just been assaulted; in which one person spits on another, not once, but twice; in which a daughter quite clearly propositions her father; in which an adolescent girl talks about the sexual act in the crudest of terms; and in the end to be left saying that the story is not so much about brutality as it is about caring, about connection, and, mostly, about love.
This article appears in June 30 • 2006.