This one goes out to the Lovers

The dark corners of Asia House's Shipherd Lounge will be flooded with light and the presence of an Irish brogue this weekend as Lovers:Winners, a play by Irish playwright Brian Friel, makes its first appearance at Oberlin.

Lovers:Winners portrays a single day of Joe and Meg - played by college juniors Ben Esner and Sasha Pollack, respectively - 17-year old lovers soon to be married. The two characters struggle with a polarized world of youth and adulthood, and reality and fantasy. Pinned together by Meg's pregnancy, they struggle to reconciliate their past and their new lives, relating often to the struggles of their parents.

"They are very extreme characters," said Pollack. "Meg is bubbling over with life and we tried to keep her down to earth."

"Joe is more rooted in reality and trying to figure out a way to deal with their situation, and that accounts for a lot of his anxiety," added Esner.

Both Esner and Pollack play the roles with a vivacious animation. Director and junior Becca Gershowitz wanted to present both characters as very different but very strong personalities. "A lot of the struggle was in how to make Joe not look like a jerk," said Gershowitz.

The play takes place in a sparsely lit and furnished room. The audience will be pressed up against the space the actors will be performing in, and on the same level, which should create an intimacy difficult to create in larger areas. The lighting and sound are nonintrusive, primarily serving as background for the actors, whose performances take center stage.

While the play itself takes place on a hill above Ballymore, a small town in Northern Ireland, the conversation of Joe and Meg carry the story far beyond the town itself, into their ambitions, fears, and futures.

Two narrators, sophomore Christian Fitchett and senior Andrea Kung, guide Joe and Meg through their experience. Interspersed throughout Joe and Meg's interaction, the narrators unfold the rest of their story, from the time they leave the hill until their tragic end. They are implied to be past lovers themselves, retelling the love story they had once led.

Friel had originally described the narrators as historians, reading the narration without emotion. "When we first came to the play we didn't like what Friel had written down," said Fitchett. Gershowitz and the cast chose to make the narrators more life-like, much to the benefit of the play.

Gershowitz stressed that, despite the play's tragic conclusion, Lovers is essentially an uplifting love story. "[Joe and Meg] exist in a realm separate from the world, but together. They don't leave each other," said Gershowitz.

She explained that Lovers is actually a two part play - Losers and Winners. Although the two parts are related, Lovers:Winners stands on its own. Gershowitz chose to only show the first half, Winners, because she didn't feel as comfortable with the topics discussed in Losers, which follows the story of an older couple who have fallen out of love.

"I felt much more of a connection to Winners than Losers because it was closer to parts of my life," said Gershowitz.

An interesting subtopic of Friel's play is a strong anti-religious sentiment. Both Joe and Meg repeatedly mock their Catholic schools and speak disparagingly of the church. It is particularly interesting as Friel himself was a Catholic priest before he became a playwright. "When I found out, it made me wonder what he had been through that made him change his mind," said a smiling Gershowitz.

Originally the director and cast hadn't planned on putting on the play in Shipherd Lounge, but had problems finding any open space. "We had a very difficult time finding space," said Pollack.

"There isn't nearly enough space for the amount of theater that goes on here," added Esner.

"Asia House was really helpful in letting us use this place," said Gershowitz. "I have come to really love this creative space."

Ben Mehlman, a professional lighting director from New York who came to work on the show as a favor to Gershowitz, said, "The only advantage [to Shipherd Lounge] is there are no expectations. You can do what you want and no one will say, 'This is weird,' because it already is kind of weird."

Lovers:Winners shows tonight and Saturday at 8 p.m. in Asia House's Shipherd Lounge, and Saturday at 2 p.m. in Asia House Courtyard, weather permitting.