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“It’s hard being easy,” remarks the prostitute in Erik Tieze’s new one-act, Motherlode, the first–and best–of three works by Colorado playwrights in the Changing Scene Theater’s Summerplay: Series 2. She’s wryly describing her own workload, of course. But the line also sums up the predicament faced by the play’s characters: For these inhabitants of a nineteenth-century mining camp, work is the only constant–and the easy life is hard to come by.
The action of this funny, thought-provoking effort takes place in the Colorado mountains. The three characters are almost archetypes–the Miner, the Barkeep and the Whore. They remain on stage through most of the action, crossing into one another’s space–the whore’s bedroom, the miner’s mineshaft, the barkeep’s saloon–as the story dictates. The miner thinks he’s found the motherlode; the whore and the barkeep have heard it all before. And yet each of them dreams a bit, too–and pans a little on the side.
Erik Weber as the miner projects such a profound sadness that it is easy to feel his character’s isolation and tired hope. Pam Loftin has a lot of fun with the whore, making her lazy, graceful and perpetually drowsy–even in those more animated moments when she comments on her clients’ need for her. The role is a tad overwritten in places and terribly sentimentalized–Tieze demonstrates little understanding of what sex means to women or what too much sex can do to them. Yet Loftin still pulls you in with her level gaze and her layered, sensitive reading of difficult material. And Kurt Soderstrom as the barkeep rounds out the trio with an earthy instinct for all the right moves.
Tieze has a penchant for graceful language and penetrating observations, and he truly cares for these characters, taking the time to flesh them out nicely. But they tend to talk in philosophical terms–and sometimes, as in the barkeep’s last speech, they go a bit overboard. We don’t need to be told all that symbolic stuff about scratching in Mother Earth.
Still, Motherlode is nicely staged and tightly directed–and ultimately provides an engaging meditation on the frustrations of work and a benevolent vision of the human struggle.
The second play, Cultivating Regret, by Mark Ogle, is a bit less arresting. Two women who were friends in college meet after many years and try to find their way back to a mutual rapport. One is happily married, the other flits from man to man. They never arrive at the same wavelength, because all the old misunderstandings and regrets resurface to block their attempt at communion.
Bickering women can make one uneasy. But then, Cultivating Regret is not meant to be a pleasant experience. Lynn Appelbaum as the married friend, Kathy, is an appealing presence–just when you feel you know what makes her tick, she surprises you with some intelligent twist of expression. Erin May as the bimbo gives her character a neurotic selfishness, a predatory spirit that works well, even if her performance is somewhat flat otherwise.
But in the end, though the road to it is somewhat tiresome, Ogle and Appelbaum give us something substantial. Kathy, at least, perceives what a real relationship is all about: parity. It’s a sharp, bright little epiphany.
The third play is a delightful foray into life in the big city. No Blues for the Cabman, by Ken Crost, might make a good independent movie: A cabdriver meets a series of nasty, exploitative people, all of whom blame the cabbie for their nastiness. The first one skips without paying him, the second he orders out of his cab. But the third rider is given the opportunity to pause and reconsider his mean-spirited, self-important behavior. Randy Schaffer as the cabbie and Tom Zelig as the frantic businessman make a nicely matched set, playing off each other’s traits and tricks.
There’s hope for the theater when young playwrights deal with ideas and actual human behavior and when they try to understand where the meaning lies in history or in daily life. Here’s hoping these three go on to bigger things.