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<< Front page Arts October 31, 2003
 
Boys and girls of “Summer” ambitious
Ozawa impresses in challenging directorial debut

Choice. Truth. Darkness. Struggle. Poetry. For the content alone, “Suddenly Last Summer” is a play worth seeing.

Directed by junior Matt Ozawa and sponsored by the Oberlin College Theater and Dance Program as well as the Oberlin Student Theater Association, Tennessee Williams’s autobiographical one-act play is a moving rendition of the quest for reality and truth. “Summer” is Ozawa’s directorial debut, which is quite a remarkable feat. It is honestly impossible to tell that the production is entirely student-produced. Lights, set and action expertly interact to heighten dramatic moments. Ozawa, who also took on the task of set design, said that “the arts are always about life and emotion.” This holds especially true for anything written by Tennessee Williams.

Set in the New Orleans Garden District of the 1930’s, the play explores what consequences greed and wealth, love and death, and perception and motivation have on personal character. As Ozawa described, “Suddenly Last Summer” delves into “the darkness within us, our mixed truths within our minds, and the repression of our feelings.”

The play is driven largely by dialogue, with much of the plot’s dramatic action taking place before the curtain rises. The ample conversation doesn’t allow for much movement or dynamic blocking on stage, and the actors seem to want to compensate for this static condition with an over-abundance of tics. To a degree this device helps to convey the characters’ overwhelming sense of anxiety, but at one moment the fidgeting is so drastic that the whole stage seems to vibrate.

The actors themselves are of mixed caliber, causing the cast to suffer from an overall inconsistency. In a manner oddly reminiscent of high school drama, the volumes of the different characters’ performances don’t quite match up. While a few individuals greeted the stage grounded, calm and nearly sedated, others cried out larger than life, melodramatic caricatures of the subjects they portrayed.

This disparity in levels of performance is possibly due to the fact that virtually all members of the cast are underclassmen, save one. Taking this into consideration, the cast’s degree of imagination and interaction as a whole is ambitious and impressive. Amy Flanagan, College senior, shone through as Catherine, the play’s principal character, in a performance that was intense and emotionally jarring.

The plot is deeply psychological and mentally stimulating. It keeps the audience’s curiosity piqued by withholding details and then revealing them at its own pace. As the characters battle for their rendition of reality in their search for what is true, it becomes clear how, on some level, each character’s survival is dependent upon the outcome. Amidst the conflict and description are subtle truths and observations about motherhood, human nature, the search for God and what it means to truly be a poet.

The play is professionally constructed, and in the end blends as a coherent whole which skillfully supports the thought-provoking text. A gripping and intense experience, “Suddenly Last Summer” is not to be overlooked.

Hall Auditorium, Little Theater. Cost: General Admission—$3 Students, Senior Citizens and Educators; $5 Public. Ticket Locations at CTS, at the Door; all tickets purchased at the door are $2 more. 8 p.m., Thurs-Sat, Oct. 30 -Nov. 1; 2 p.m., Sat. & Sun, Nov. 1 and 2.