The Subject Was Roses

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Several years ago I had a wonderful black shepherd/husky who told me his name was Scorpio. Barking for him was an art. By his tone I could tell what sparked the barking. He thought it his responsibility to give boarding instructions to people at the bus stop. At times he just wanted to say hello to the family behind us. Other times he wanted to warn the people down the block a cat wandered around their yard. Never mind it was their cat.

Paul Borillo and A. Lee Massaro in The Subject Was Roses at the Arvada Center.

Asking the next-door neighbor if his barking bothered her, she simply smiled, “that’s what dogs do.”

Dogs know what it means to be a dog. Cats know what it means to be a cat. Wolves know about family, determined to protect their young, and yet are frequently blamed for vicious attacks, which are only carefully planned survival tactics. They kill to eat, not to hang elk heads in their dens.

After all of this time, humanity continues to struggle with what it means to be human. Relationships balance on a “fragilic” precipice. When ignored, taken for granted, boxed in routine, endowed with hidden expectations, shrouded in self-protective secrets, relationships falter over the edge collapsing from estranged boredom.

Frank Gilroy’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award play The Subject Was Roses demonstrates the fragility of relationships with brilliant sensitive perception. A skillion years from now the play will be just as relevant as it is today, as it was when written during the Vietnam War set during World War II.

The awesome cast, currently playing at the Arvada Center contains an element their characters have lost and perhaps never really had: connection with each other.

The three local highly acclaimed actors: Paul Borrillo (John Cleary), Michael Kingsbaker (Timmy Cleary), and A. Lee Massaro (Nettie Cleary) sizzle in their connection with each other while their characters float within their own universe wanting to touch and be touched, wanting to be a part of, living in comfort roles they created out of expectation, angry because the others can’t fix it.

When Timmy returns from his two year stint on the battlefields of World War II, John and Nettie flirt with divorce, desperately wanting to hide the fact from their son, desperately wanting life to return to where it was before Timmy joined the army, desperately wanting their roles as nurturing controlling, protective mother and macho baseball focused father.

The curtain opens the morning after Timmy’s Coming Home party. John needs to meet a client. Nettie plans on pampering the boy she remembers, ignoring the fact the boy has become a man. According to her, it is John’s fault Timmy drank too much “last night.” It is John’s fault he insists on leaving for work.

Nettie knows how to cook and clean. That’s the job she signed up for when she and John married. John sits at the breakfast table reading the paper expecting to be waited on hand and foot complaining the coffee is either too weak or too strong. No matter what else she has to do, waiting on him always comes square in the middle.

John needles her about treating Timmy like a baby, and how easy it will be to return to the old mistakes, hers, of course, not his. Money is not her concern. She doesn’t need to know how much he makes so she has to ask him for every penny, explaining why she needs it. John fidgets over her wanting $10.00 for new curtains in Timmy’s room. Words between them are bitten off in the middle.

Nettie remembers waffles as Timmy’s Breakfast favorite, but when she asks him what his favorite is, prepared for her answer, and he tells her bacon and eggs, her tidy universe comes unglued.

Director Billie McBride brings to the production tight direction, tight interaction and character distraction so close together physically, so far apart emotionally, psychologically, sharing their discomfort with the audience, hiding thoughts and feelings from each other.

Laura K. Love designed the comfortable middle class apartment in West Bronx. Contradictory to the family’s life-style, the bright kitchen with its yellow tincture reaches out to the audience with a warm invitation. One wants to be there, drop by for a cup of coffee around the table centered in the middle of the kitchen. That is, as long as John isn’t sitting there reading his paper, demanding service from his wife, complaining the coffee is too weak or too strong, muttering under his breath “it’s a waste of money to bring good coffee into the house.” In spite of her uptight demeanor, there is the underlying sense that Nettie would absorb the yellow kitchen’s warmth with friends around her table. There is the wanting for someone to be her friend. Massaro brings that out in Nettie.

It is difficult to keep one’s eyes off of Borrillo’s hyper-spiked nerve wracking distraction mannerism so calculated for John, precise and consistent.

Likewise with Massaro with the estranged discomfort she brings to light with Nettie.

The two so want to keep their secrets hidden from Timmy. Wasted energy on their part, he knows. He’s known for a long time. Kingsbaker generously provides Timmy the appearance of knowing, the pretense everything is fine until he’s pushed against the wall, his vulnerabilities and his determination to live his own life. It is Timmy who keeps John and Nettie together, each living in a different dream world, while criticizing the other’s dream while defending their’s.

The Subject Was Ross is a play that cries for intimacy, to see people as they are rather than as it is wanted; a play that recognizes the torment of separation, isolation, false expectations, the wanting things to remain the same as always, when change happens every second of every day. The play speaks to loss, hanging onto memories, expecting someone else to make them happy which means doing what they want them to do, rather than being their own person. It’s a play about disappointment; feeling trapped in roles that lock them in cages. It’s a play about the fragility of relationships between mothers and children, fathers and children, husbands and wives, creating a world of content where content can’t live because it can’t breathe. It’s a play about competition between mother and father over a child’s attention feeding their own private resentment when the child makes his own choices. It’s a play about wanting and not knowing how to ask, about giving and not knowing how to give, about blame and not knowing personal responsibility.

The Arvada Center’s production of The Subject Was Roses is beautifully produced, exquisitely directed, with a compelling set that makes one want to say “that’s OK John, don’t drink the coffee, I’ll do it.” with one of the most magnificent casts the Arvada Center has put together in a long time, and they’re all local actors who spread the wings in other places, but they belong to us, and that says a great deal.

The Subject Was Roses should definitely not be missed. It contains a great deal to say right here, right now with subtle lessons and not so subtle lessons to carry home.