Beirut

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Paper Cat Productions has been producing plays for a while. Beirut by Alan Bowne inaugurates their new space at 3822 Tennyson Street. The name 1896 Theatre comes from that very year. It was the year of the birth of film and the year the Elitch Theatre opened its doors. A small intimate theatre with the seating capacity of 42 was once used for showing experimental films.

Phil Newsom (Torch) & Sara Rae Downey (Blue) take comfort in one another in a scene from Beirut.

For a small intimate theatre in the metropolitan area where several good long standing theatres struggle to keep mind, body and soul together, the first question that arises is why Beirut as its inauguration?

First produced in 1987, Beirut swirled with controversy, but the controversy surrounded by subsequent on-the-edge plays seems to have forced Beirut into the passé realm.

Beirut takes us into the future. An unknown plague with a strong resemblance to AIDS runs ramped. Those who show symptoms or thought to be carriers are quarantined on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A young man by the name of Torch (Phil Newsom) suspected of being a carrier is confined to a rat hole of a room. Empty cans and papers are strewn around the floor. His girlfriend, Blue (Sara Rae Downey) sneaks in, wanting to live with him. She could clean up the rat hole, requisitioning curtains for the one tiny window.

As a carrier, Torch runs the risk of infecting her even by touching. She doesn’t care. Sex has been forbidden. Life, according to her, isn’t worth living on the outside.

This could well be a thought-provoking intriguing play; the script reveals too many holes.

To identify those who have symptoms or are carries, a large P has been branded on the buttocks, left for men, right for women. First question? Why not on the back or arm or forehead? The answer? Simple. It gives the actors one more reason to pull down the pants.

Along with everything else, something has sucked out everyone’s brains. No one shows any sign of thinking, except for what goes on below the belt. There is no depth, no thought-provoking insight.

Blue and Torch spend most of the hour dancing around the stage in near nothingness, playing at sex, without any sense of sexuality, romance, or bond. Sex is the only thing that matters. He, fighting to avoid contact with her; she, having thrown all senses to the four winds flaunting her body. It is difficult to get a rich love story out of two people who barely know each other.

The hour-long play struggles with repetition falling all over itself, to the point of monotony. If Blue and Torch had been connected for several years, the desire to be together might make sense. Their history short; their relationship shallow.

For those who buy into fear for the sake of fear, and granted there are those who live amongst us, Beirut might appeal, even now.

Did Paper Cat produce Beirut for shock value? Did it want to make an awesome statement to an already drenched theatre community? Did it want to establish itself as an advant guard theatre?

The two actors, Newsom and Downey obviously have more talent than what they could demonstrate during this romp on stage. They just don’t have much to work with. The third actor, Fred Katona plays an obnoxious Guard who gets his kicks molesting Blue, and tormenting Torch.

The sex dance, and that’s all it is, by the two actors would make sense if the mind had also been engaged with intelligent conversation tickling the imagination. Little wonder it created a sensation when first produced, but a lot of water has spilled over the boards in American theatre since 1987. No one has forgotten AIDS. It’s just that AIDS isn’t the only game where the moves have to be juggled for attention.