Elephant Stageworks 2nd Stage is a cozy space where, unless I’m mistaken, I saw a three-person improv opera five years ago. It’s currently running Lost Limbs, a two person one-hour play starring Maya Parish and Max Williams as two lonely souls who lose everything in order to find each other. The postage-size stamp stage is adorned with fishnets, littered with shells, strung up like arches framing a wide-screen from the ceiling. The monitor mostly plays non-descript coloring, but will show ocean waves, sunsets, as well as slides of family photos. The seashore motif provides the setting for our drifting protagonists Steady (Max Williams) and Isaac (Maya Parish) who find themselves on a smaller Hawaiian isle. One has lost his twin brother and the other her husband. Both have very little family left. Steady prefers “landscapes to people, most people” and assembles model ships inside bottles. Isaac is a gardener. The play is almost entirely made up of overlapping monologues between the two, shooting out rapid fire exposition, sometimes reciting the same lines in unison.
Fondly, bitter sweetly observing who they were as they walk the audience through a slide show of their past, they rummage around distant memories. There is a funereal kismet of the two united by the sea. “They live with their dead,” observes Isaac when pointing out an obscure Hawaiian custom of burying the deceased in their front yards. They mourn their losses with the unassuming hope that they are on course to meet their destiny. The ethereal line delivery of a line like “What are you here for?” is met with the response, “What do you have?”
The actors never leave the stage, even when switching over to another character. The initial transition is clunky, as Parish suddenly changes her speech to an affected voice. Mostly she speaks in a clipped tone, swallowing words at the end of her sentences as she reminisces. There are a few sound directing choices from Christopher Hall in the limited production. The first transition to the other characters could have been easily saved if the director had placed them in shadows as he did the second time. It’s a subtle distinction that makes all the difference as to avoid any confusion, and actually serves the story quite well. During one intimate moment, the lights dim and the actors, spaced as far apart as they can be, begin swaying while they lower their voices to a soothing level, hypnotizing the audience.
At first, the appearance of Parrish and Max Williams is surprising. With their tanned faces and messily coiffed brunette hair, this duo doesn’t just look like a pair of sand babies, but their TV-good looks are a bit unreal. Williams’ masculine features have a mixture of William Dafoe and Harry Hamlin with Gary Busey’s alert eyes. However, they’re perfectly cast and have the necessary chemistry.
Lost Limbs closes today.
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