Hopscotch Succeeds Despite Uneven Presentation

If our generation is as desensitized as they say, the violent parts of Hopscotch won't affect viewers much.

One with a tendency to overanalyze will find dozens of details that should be improved and dozens of others that shine brilliantly.

But for certain, one will likely enjoy what starts entrancingly, stumbles through unmotivated and unclear sections, and emerges as a strong directing debut for sophomore Ann Schapira.

Sophomore Claire Miller and first-year Ben Stuber tackle the difficult task of bringing an open-to-interpretation two person play to life with plenty of energy. The pair is very comfortable with one another, quickly bringing the audience into the scene.

Their ease with each other as performers is also essential for the more physical sections of the play to come off convincingly.

Miller enters to the strains of Paul Simon's "Was a Sunny Day" and proceeds to chalk Hopscotch squares on the floor before beginning a game. She is so casual in her movements, so relaxed and connected to the space that one can't help but be drawn in. When she first speaks, and when Stuber enters the scene, the reality remains strong.

What develops in the park before the audience is the story of two people who know each other in an unexplained way, keep secrets from one another and the audience and live out 14 years of pain and hope during the length of the show.

Both cast and director consider the 40-minute show to be more mystery than anything else. From the onset little is explained, much is suggested and there remain questions of relationships, leaving people and places behind and the effects of one's choices to ponder.

The script is very open to interpretation, Stuber said. "I would think any two productions done with no contact with each other would be completely different."

But before we can begin to interpret the deeper meanings of the play, or even be affected by the raw emotions it dredges up, we have to negotiate a segment of dialogue far less effective than any that precedes or follows it.

Miller falls into a pattern in which her asides and retorts are sharp, but her other deliveries seem to lack an emotional connection. Stuber flip-flops between a convincing everyman and a slightly overdone, jaw-jutting, hard-nosed type. The pair begins to move about the stage as if they were purposely avoiding each other, nearly stalking from place to place.

These are prime examples of my major issue with Hopscotch: the apparent lack of motivation behind some of the blocking and the lack of a strong emotional grounding expressed in much of the early dialogue. Both cause the play to become unfocused and unfortunately to lose the strong sense of reality it had earlier achieved. Contributing to this lack of focus was the words being lost in the sound-sucking void that is Wilder Main. Eventually, both settle down into their roles and relationship as the conversation moves into the conflict that brought the pair together in the first place. They also develop the central theme of the story, drawing out the strong undercurrent of emotion that flows beneath any dialogue between two people who know each other well. In this case, it manifests as a destructive, sometimes self-destructive, energy that jars both audience and performer.

The above mentioned flaws appear again from time to time, but the intensity brings the reality back to the stage. As the play progresses, it would seem that what this play needed most was exactly what Wilder Main can't give it, namely a greater sense of intimacy between the audience and the actors.

Likewise, on the technical side, it's a shame senior Polly Seashore's minimalistic lighting design - which emulates the high and low lighting of a natural scene, effectively adding to the performance without distracting - could not be displayed in a more receptive venue, such as Little Theater.

This production was developed in a way most productions cannot be due to cast size, script length or technical complexity. "It was really more of a cooperative effort than me telling them what to do," said Schapira. "I was the one guiding it because I was the one watching it, but a lot of [the cast's] ideas wound up in the finished product."

The organic method of direction and development does allow for a casual air in conversation and a safe and smooth execution of the fights, but all three involved could benefit from some basic methodology to help ground and direct the acting.

The strongest point of this production is that the actors play their parts so, as Schapira puts it in her director notes, "There is no protagonist." Neither character is completely right or wrong, and neither walk out of the park with anything they expected to.

"If you think about the outcome of the situation," said Schapira, "there really are no winners and losers."

In the end, Hopscotch manages to be moving, thought provoking and intense. And at only 40 minutes, it's hard to go wrong with this show.

Hopscotch will be performed in Wilder Main at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $2 and available at Wilder desk. There will be free 2 p.m. shows Saturday and Sunday in Tappan Square. Persons attending the 2 p.m. shows are encouraged to arrive 10 minutes beforehand in case the venue has moved from the farthest south bench. Just look for the woman playing hopscotch.