Wrenching and purgative, John Patrick Shanley’s two-person Danny & the Deep Blue Sea, directed by Michael Arabian for the Elephant Theatre, shows how anyone, anywhere, anytime can be redeemed.
How, once circumstance strips us down to our most Darwinian selves, we seek (and hopefully find) consolation in human connections, thus belying the Hallmark platitude that opposites attract.
First Arabian sets the stage for what has to be atoned. It’s a lulu.
He gets the most out of a minimalist stage: the opening act bar, two small, round tables and two round chairs, perfectly describes a Venn Diagram of how two discrete universes can become one.
Two more excoriating isolations you could never encounter: Roberta (Deborah Dir), meets Danny (Daniel De Weldon) in a Bronx bar.
Both wax feral, both wear emotional wounds, both bear unbearable sorrow.
He thinks he’s just killed someone with his bare fists (he could have – welts, contusions, mangled hand, facial ticks).
She has to just get out of the house, away from her parents, her teenage son, and a secret that if not managed would continue to burble like a tar pit bubble.
Stage set, let the atoning begin.
Because even the most uncultivated of us seek packs of our own ilk, Roberta and Danny meld into a miasma of despair that, through stages of raw violence, unveiled gawkiness, and guttural ejaculations of affection, effects something that approaches love.
Dir and De Weldon were magnificent in their tentative attempts at intimacy and tenderness; from their bumbling stray dog get-to-know-each-other sex to their Bukoskian terms of endearment; from their eager satisfaction of their immediate needs (analgesic alcohol, analgesic sex) to their imaginative plans for a future together: a white wedding, a place of their own that she can decorate, hope and stability.
Dir was magnificent as she peeled away her layers of pain like she was peeling the successively tender (and sweeter) layers of an onion with a dull knife. At first we know her from a distance, the way you’re not sure how to deal with an approaching homeless person because, though you feel pity, you’re not sure how she’ll smell.
Then we get to care for her. As her story unfolded she became more and more familiar, more and more caring, more and more vulnerable, a condition she didn’t like – witness her meltdown near the end – but one to which she instinctively gravitated.
Initially and damn effectively, De Weldon was a blunt instrument, to borrow the phrase with which M labeled Daniel Craig’s newly minted 007 Bond.
His transformation (his fricative cursing warbled into marbled words of love) into a teensy weensy less blunt force husband willing to assume accountability for his nasty propensity towards violence, for the exorcism of Roberta’s demons, for the rewriting of his life’s script, was equally magnificent.
Performances are 8 PM Friday & Saturday. The play runs until September 1. Tickets are $20 or 2 for 1. The Theatre is located at 6322 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood. For information all (323) 960-7753 or visit http://www.elephantstageworks.com/.
