Sailor’s Song

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Bewildered wonderment creases his face with puzzled eyes.

Paragon Theatre Company’s production of Sailor’s Song.

Observing the landscape around him, he muses, “Everything moves,” the river, ocean, even the clouds in the sky. “The wind is like music.” Everything moves. Everything that is, but him. He’s stuck.

Rich peers out through the eyes of actor, Jeremy Make performing in Paragon Theatre’s new play by John Patrick Shanley, Sailor’s Song at the Phoenix Theatre.

To be quite frank, to miss this production: you’re nuts!!!!

Directed by Wendy Franz, with an enchanting set designed by David LaFont, and the magical stamp of Nicholas Sugar’s choreography, Sailor’s Song takes one on a journey of dreams, schemes, life, death, fantasy flings, questionable talents choosing not to reveal their sources, family members chewing life from different pages in horrified laughable conflicts, and a peek from one side of the vibrational universe into another. All in one act.

One act. And you don’t want it to be so. Because of its content, because of its inspirational bite, because the actors lose themselves in their pinpointed characters, because of its imaginative direction, you sit in your theatre seat begging it go on. All it does is smile back and say, “No can do.”

The time is now. The place is an American Atlantic Coastal Town. The illusion is here and beyond, what you see with your eyes, what you imagine with your heart.

Rich has been a sailor, and he could be but doesn’t want to be. There has to be more.

His uncle, John (Tom Borillo) is a sailor, always has been, always will be. Obnoxious on the one hand, rough around the edges, operates from a sailor’s bodacious vocabulary, with a perception scanning far beyond the ocean’s horizon.

John’s wife is dying. Two months ago Carla (Melissa McCorkle) developed a cough. Now she lies in their seaside home in a coma. John summoned Rich to visit, for company, for family connection, for reassurance while he helplessly stands by waiting for the inevitable. This rough around the edges sailor man reveals a tender side. He loves his wife as deeply as he loves the sea in its depth, and already he feels the pangs of loneliness and separation. Rich wants to know why there is a cot on the front porch. John tells him he sometimes needs to sleep outside because the house is sick inside.

And there’s Rich, young vibrant, wanting to know who he is, where he fits, and why, connecting with two sisters who love each other dearly as different as night and day.

Beautiful Lucy, gracefully played by Shelly Gaza, invites Rich to join her and her sister, Joan at their table. Joan is an enigma. She’s a psychic with a talent for automatic writing. She doesn’t understand her gift. She doesn’t know where it came from or why, but remains obedient to it. Kate Avallone gives Joan room to move and breathe as Gaza gracefully displays Lucy.

In a swirl of perplexity, Rich’s imagination carries him into dreams of dancing with Lucy and Joan. Attracted to both, Sailor’s Song plays on the fantasy of combining Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with Eugene O’Neill. That alone could well tickle a giggle, unless, of course, the choreography of Sugar weaves its magic into the ebb and flow of the seaside tides, which it does, brilliantly. The symbolism of the ocean with its depth and dark at the bottom and its glistening sun drenched rolling top holds hands with the dreaming and dance slicing the universe into several dimensions allowing us to see through the cracks.

This allows for the dichotomy when John sniggles to Rich, “Ignorance is past down in a family like a gold watch,” and then speaks resignation when he asks, “Tonight is the night she will die, will you sit with me?” This is stunned Rich, who tries to look his uncle in the eye with “I can’t make up my mind if you’re horrible or good.”

In spite of his on-going grieving spirit, John maintains eagle eyed observations, he’s had to learn from the sea, and perhaps is the one element that keeps Rich from being a sailor, Torn between Lucy and Joan, John noticing Rich’s receding hairline urges him to “bang” both Joan and Lucy before they “get realistic.” His uncle just doesn’t fit neatly into a grief stricken man. Joan mystifies him and scares him. Lucy reflects his agony when she says, “I just want someone to know me.” when Rich just wants “this to be real,” but he doesn’t know what real is, until….

Two crates, a paddle, and a long wide blue cloth insist on the illusion of a rowboat on the river with Rich, Joan and Lucy. Insists is the word because the transformation is strictly believable. The crates are the illusion, the reality: a rowboat.

Just before Carla leaves her tortured body, John and Rich carry her to the front porch. John covers his grief with raucous humor. The body is still. No movement whatsoever. Gently music arrives from somewhere and a hand begins to sway, and a spirit begins to dance. McCorkle who once danced with the Martha Graham Dance Company explodes into mystic musical form. She has affected me forever. I will never again watch death close down a body without hearing the music and seeing the dance. I have tried to visualize that previously, and at times have been successful, but McCorkle’s grace beauty and life force etched Carla into my mind forever.

And what’s this? Grief bound John wants to party with the girls with jokes, laughter, seductive dancing and champagne? This is a man who loved his wife? This is a man who has had to stand by helpless for two months staring death in the face, and he wants to party? Too much for Rich who loses it, in a surreal confrontation.

Blue and tan sails of various sizes cover the background of the set. You can almost feel and smell the ocean always in motion just beyond.

Borillo climbs inside of John covered with grief, guttural, strident humor, complex turmoil, and a love for life that grasps a variety of dimensions all at the same time. Borillo has knocked out audiences several times with his on target performances, but this one floats him to the top.

This is Gaza’s first performance in Denver with Paragon, and she nestled so deeply into Lucy’s arms, it won’t be her last. Seductive, say what’s on your mind Lucy, dictates the power to snake Rich into her lair.

Avallone melts into the mystery of Joan.

This is only Make’s second performance in Denver since graduating from Connecticut College, and there is power and strength and wonder in this young actor that he has only caught a glimpse of flowing deep into the dimensions of Sailor’s Song.

Paragon is known for its powerful with attention to detail productions. Paragon is known for its all seeing eye toward casting. They understand theatre and its wanting and need to move, soothe, challenge, confront its audiences. What a gift.

Sailor’s Song is a portrait of contrasting brilliant colors you’ll want to hang in your memory to visit frequently for its truthful spirit and spirited motion of life.