Sunday on the Rocks (l.-r.: Katherine Norman, Kenzie Luce, and Hannah Ripp-Dieter.)
In a New York Times interview in 2007, acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Theresa Rebeck admitted that her characters are frequently people who act badly. “I’m interested in what drives people to poor behavior,” she said. That fascination is definitely on display in one of her early career plays, Sunday on the Rocks, produced by Intermission Theatre on the Evjue Stage at the Bartell.
Before she wrote Mauritius, Bad Dates, The Understudy or Seminar — and long before she was creator, head writer and showrunner for the NBC series “Smash” — Rebeck brought four unlikely female roommates together for one very long Sunday of arguments, philosophical debate, confessions, betrayal and generally bad behavior, fueled by alcohol and angst about their relationships with men and uncertain futures.
The archetypes for each character set up obvious clashes that anyone who has lived with roommates will recognize: Jessica (Katherine Norman) the pious, repressed, controlling neat freak; Elly (Hannah Ripp-Dieter), the foul-mouthed, quarrelsome rebel; Jen (Kat Bunke), the party girl with skewed ideas about sex and relationships; and Gayle (Kenzie Luce), the peacemaker who tries to keep the living situation from descending into anarchy.
The play opens with Elly suggesting that she and her fellow roomies Jen and Gayle join her in getting drunk on scotch early on a Sunday morning, in part to dull her own misery at discovering she is pregnant. She has no interest in marrying the baby’s father and has decided to get an abortion. As the 30-somethings (who seem a lot more like 20-somethings) become more and more inebriated, they talk about men, feminism, past sins and their resentment of the judgmental house mother, Jessica. Ultimately each of the conversations focus on the characters’ paralysis —unattached, unsure where they fit in the world, unwilling to “get real jobs and pay real rent” and unable to figure out how to get on with their lives.
It is a credit to both director Chelsea Anderson and to the fine cast she assembled that this premise is watchable for the two-and-a-half hour running time. They keep the conversations from becoming static, and each character has plenty to do in the realistic set, filled with college-grade furniture and knick-knacks. The actors round out their characters and stay engaged, even during long stretches when they are not featured.
Kenzie Luce gives the most fully realized, affecting performance as Gayle. Her understated wit and empathy provide a welcome, grounded contrast to the bickering of her roommates, which sometimes gets screechy.
Intermission Theatre, a company run entirely by UW students, should be applauded for mounting such an ambitious and professional production. Unfortunately, the script is filled with too much unconnected pathos, muddled arguments about gender politics and a lack of plot. When the characters finally decide to get their acts together at the end of the play, it’s unconvincing. It’s just a relief that they’ve finally found the agency to leave the house.
