By Eric George Tauber
SAN DIEGO– What would you do for your child?
If your child were taken from you, what would you do to get her back?
Before you answer “anything,” think about what “anything” might entail. Desperation doesn’t bring out the best in any of us. It’s easy to say, “I would never…” when you’ve never had to. These are the choices Crystal finds herself making in Bethany now playing at the Old Globe.
We begin with Charlie, a motivational speaker who reassures us that we deserve to be rich. Indeed, our “higher power” wants us to be rich. All we really need to do is tell ourselves this until we truly believe it. It’s narrischkeit, of course, but it’s narrischkeit we want to hear. Yet faith alone doesn’t pay the bills or stop a foreclosure.
With a dearth of affordable housing and well paying jobs, Crystal finds herself homeless. Fortunately, there’s an abundance of foreclosed signs on houses that still have water and electricity. If she can just break into one, she’ll have a roof over her head. However, she didn’t get there first. Gary did.
Gary has been living “under the radar” for a lot longer. While he looks and smells like a homeless guy and she doesn’t, at the point of intersection, they’re not so far apart. And she needs him to show her the ropes. The connection between them keeps us guessing where this is going. But he’s homeless for a reason.
Crystal’s efforts to make an abandoned house “homey” reminded me of Charlie Chaplin in Gold Rush, eating his shoe with a knife and fork to feel like a human being. Crystal needs a real-enough looking house to get her daughter back.
Crystal isn’t unemployed. She has a job … sort of. Crystal sells cars for Saturn: straight commission. So, you know where this is going. But she has a hot prospect: Charlie may just buy that sporty, fully-loaded, red number in the showroom. But Charlie’s not just shopping for a set of wheels.
At the climax came a less-than-convincing fight scene. Granted, you never want your actors to really get hurt. And it’s pretty hard to choreograph with a 4×4. But the art of stage combat is to make it look brutal. This fight fell short and the man next to us was even chuckling.
Jennifer Ferrin (aka Louise on AMC’s “Hell on Wheels”) is compelling as Crystal. She has a laser focus on one goal: getting her daughter back from foster care. We feel with her as this motivates and justifies every choice.
Carlo Albán is intriguing as Gary. He’s remarkably articulate as he rapid-fire rants his paranoid government conspiracy theories. He’s even kind of endearing in a shaggy, bashful rescue dog kind of way. But his mental illness makes him dangerously unpredictable.
Sylvia M’lafi Thompson, a well-known figure in San Diego’s theatre scene, gave a very genuine performance as the social worker, Toni. She balanced that blend of caring, tired and jaded common case-workers. Having worked with at-risk kids myself, I’ve seen my share come into the job full of menshlichkeit only to be worn down by the job.
James Shanklin (aka “Hell on Wheels” Aaron Hatch) is charmingly sinister as Charlie. We know he’s a manipulative sheister from the get-go, but he tells us what we want to believe about ourselves. I would like to have seen more development in his character. The writer only gave us one face of a multi-headed dragon.
I would like to see more development overall. Playing 90 minutes without an intermission, Bethany struck me as more of a work-in-progress than a finished product. Nonetheless, Bethany is a provocative and powerful portrait of a woman with hard choices and few good options.
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Eric Tauber is a freelance writer specializing in the arts. He may be contacted via eric.tauber@sdjewishworld.com