The Bridge burner: Reheated
The Vortex,
Through December 2
Running Time: 2 hrs
Aaron Brown’s new play, The Bridge Burner, is about a gay man — Brian — trying to deal with his younger, drug-addicted (and hetero) brother Stan. It’s also about the other members of Brian’s shattered and dysfunctional family trying to deal with each other, and, okay, it’s an accurate picture of anger and loss and need and denial. It’s no less well-written than one of the better crisis-o’-the-week TV movies; unfortunately, it’s also as familiar.
This is soap opera territory here, with some of the actors in this VORTEX Repertory Company production far better than you’d expect in such a genre, and some of them not quite up to even that level. Director Heather Barfield would have done better to insist that the latter slow down or at least modulate the tempo of their delivery, thus providing more dramatic tension and even more realistic speech rhythms. It’s relieving yet ironic — like a blast of Texas Hill Country air in the middle of New York City’s subway system would be — that the only likable character, the only person in the story not thoroughly corroded by familial or societal or genetic tribulations, is portrayed by an actor doing the best work in this ensemble.
Gabriel Maldonado, as Brian’s long-suffering partner James, is outstanding and astounding; whether he’s fretfully searching for his missing ID badge or indicating that he’s fucking well had enough of the malignant family situation or simply kissing Brian goodbye, this young man couldn’t be more natural. Wow, in fact. Remove the stage and you’d have no idea he was acting — this in a role that requires no small range of emotions.
But, hold on, don’t remove the stage, because it’s perfectly constructed to the needs of this angst-fest, and Barfield’s direction makes full use of all its levels and wall-frames to divide locales and even emotional states. (Junkie Stan, for instance, always makes his phone calls for financial aid from under some second-level floor, cramping himself down, as if the very environment were closing in on him.) Jason Amato’s lighting design is beyond reproach, as usual, effectively illuminating the setting (from which the cameo performances of Wendy Goodwin, Stephanie Swenson, and Clay Towery shine like first-water diamonds, and which performances make me, who knows exactly why, want to see a revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Swenson and Towery as the leads).
Aaron Brown can write, no doubt about that, and this play leaves me wishing I’d seen his previous efforts, The M.O. of M.I. and Norm L, but also wishing that the playwright had used his fine ear for dialogue, his skills of characterization, and his sense of outrage to write something beyond the pretty damned ordinary. There are playwrights out there trying to stretch the medium and its expectations with each new show, attempting to bring us fresh language or story or structure, and some of these modern bards can’t even write as well as the author of The Bridge Burner. I look forward to seeing Brown’s next work — especially if he moves into less-charted territory
This article appears in November 24 • 2000.