By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Nothing is as it seems in the “rubber room.”
That’s a room, one of many actually in the New York Public School’s reassignment centers. If you are a teacher who runs afoul of authority, you are sent here while your case works its way through the twisted bowels of the city and union bureaucracy. That can take months. And during that time teachers sit, for work days on end, supervised by a proctor who reports if they are late or absent, left to their own devices, though still subject to the whims of the bureaucracy.
That’s the purgatory that Evelyn Reid (Laura Hohman) arrives in when a student, known to be a liar, reports that she saw the teacher making out with a track star.
Evelyn joins the other disaffected denizens of the room.
Laura Hohman as Evelyn
How this bright, young and ambitious teacher changes the dynamic of the room unfolds in “Evelyn in Purgatory.” The Topher Payne play, directed by Cynthia Stroud, opened Thursday in the Eva Marie Saint Theatre in Bowling Green State University’s Wolfe Center for the Arts. The show continues with performances: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday, at 2 p.m.; Oct. 27 and 28 at 8 p.m.; and Oct. 29 at 2 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $15, available at: http://www.bgsu.edu/arts-and-sciences/theatre-and-film.html.
The script mixes sharp humor and close character observations with drama that darkens along the way. There’s an undertow of unease, not unlike a “Twilight Zone” episode. All this is presented on minimal stage and realized with vivid acting that brings characters, who could lapse into stereotype, to life. Stroud makes sure the audience senses, but never personally experiences the ennui in the room.
The room is a soul sucking place. The inmates spend a lot of time in close quarters yet closed off from each other.
Evelyn’s arrival changes that. Her energy and eagerness, seem a bit naïve, yet insinuates itself in this place where there is a hierarchy of who sits where.
Nicole Tuttle as Roberta
At the top are the caustic English teacher Roberta Burke (Nicole Tuttle) and bullying coach Fred Disalvo (George Ramirez). As the play starts she’s on her third stint in the reassignment center. Better here than in a classroom. She’s fed up with her students. So in the course of attempting to teach them English literature she slips in a few choice curse words, so she can spend the last months before retirement in the room, doing nothing at full pay.
Disalvo is charged with breaking a student’s wrist as he was pulling the student and another guy off a weaker student they were beating up.
The object of his scorn among the room’s residents is Toby Fleming (Jarod Mariani), a rookie science teacher who lost his cool and hurled a globe across a classroom in frustration brought on by student indifference and high-stakes testing.
Lila Wadkins (Kelly Dunn), the earth mother of the room, also was in trouble for expressing anger over the direction of education, only she expressed it directly to her principal and was with insubordination. The art teacher misses her students more than any of the others.
Watching over the room is the proctor Candace Metzger (Sarah Drummer), a vulnerable young woman who at first works hard at being a non-entity.
But she and the rest open up as the play unwinds. That development is guided by Evelyn. People start talking. When, much to Roberta’s disgust, it turns out she is the only one to have read “The Crucible,” they read it together. The Salem Witch Trials offers an echo of their own situations. In the second act another script draws their attention—Toby’s science fiction epic that reflects his experience in the room.
The real creator of drama is Evelyn. Her machinations unfold underneath the action that is designed to distract from them.
From left, George Ramirez, Kelly Dunn and Sarah Drummer in “Evelyn in Purgatory.”
Occasionally one of the teachers gets called before the board, a disembodied panel whose only voice is Atwood (Mackenzie Baumhower), aptly cold and impersonal.
This gives Tuttle’s Roberta an opportunity to dissemble with an unctuous charisma. It gives Mariani’s Tobey a chance to say his peace.
It gives Ramirez’ Disalvo a chance to bare his soul. That monologue closes Act 1 on an emotionally riveting note.
His revelations raise the stakes for Act 2 which swings from a baby shower and a final showdown.
Payne leaves the audience hanging as to the outcome. It would be interesting to hear the residents of the rubber room discuss Evelyn’s fate.
