'Blue Window' fills one room with five views

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH The cast members of Blue Window inhabit their own little worlds.

Craig Lucas's Blue Window begins as five disjointed shards. A guitarist talks to his glassy-eyed girlfriend. In rushes a dripping guy who just got out of the shower. A writer in chic glasses reasons with her lesbian lover. Chewing on an apple, a skydiving instructor toys with puzzle pieces.

Linking these puzzling personalities is Lucas' fifth character, a neurotic woman who, at the onset of the play, dashes about in her bra with a bowl full of mussels. This is Libby (Abigail Sendrow, TD '00), their extremely reluctant hostess. In anxious preparation for her guests, the first she's had the nerve to invite in four years, Libby loses her tooth on a stubborn bottle cap. It is then her miserable duty to entertain the other six characters in her New York City apartment while struggling to hide the gaps that impair both her smile and the group's awkward small talk.

The background music that defines the separate, zany worlds of the play is as discordant as the characters themselves. It is a combination of operatic trills, guitar-strumming, Kim Wilde's "You Keep Me Hangin' On," and other unmelodious melody mixtures. As writer Alice (Micaela Blei, BK '00) muses, "All these different people, in different places, doing different things. It's like modern music."

The effect is at first confusing and overwhelming. Yet while the structure of this play may be offbeat, the characters eventually grow tangible as the actors guide their initially bizarre behavior into believability. This cast is especially adept at managing the convergence of the play's fragmented scenes. After sprinting out of the shower and onstage in a towel to answer his phone, Griever (B. Brian Argotsinger, MC '00) searches through his clothes for something to wear. Simultaneously, Libby practices how she will impress her guest Alice. "I looooove your new book!" she gushes. "Charming, but no," Griever mutters to himself as he sifts through his shirt options. Libby shakes her head and grimaces. She tries again. "What I love about your books, Alice, are the...covers!" "Ummm, no," Griever mum-bles, tossing another rejected shirt onto the pile.

When these individual scenes finally intersect in Libby's living room, the characters engage in a round of intellectual banter. Their conversation covers words, ideals, movies, and symbols, but escapes unbearable pretentiousness through mistaken comments, choppy silences, and failed jokes. Although Lucas' neglect makes his character the weakest, Norbert (Ryan Karels, BR '00) is amusing in one clumsy social moment. In a discussion about skydivers, he is asked, "What do you do if they don't jump?" "You push 'em," Norbert answers casually. Karels maintains his mild expression while the audience laughs at the nervous smiles and thinly disguised shock of the other guests, who are unsure whether or not this is a joke.

The overlapping dialogue and sheer number of characters present onstage constantly command the attention of the audience. It's an enjoyable cacophony, yet a two-character episode in which Libby mournfully reveals her broken tooth to Griever comes as a welcome relief. At last we are given the opportunity to pause and focus on characters individually. This is possibly the strongest scene of the play; neither Argotsinger nor Sendrow overplay their roles to sentimentality. It is here that the audience gains further insight into what is truly at stake in this inopportune gathering, as Griever encourages Libby to face up to her fear.

Much of the disconnected atmosphere of the play is contrived through the resourceful direction of Luca Borghese, ES '00, and Serge Chalubo's creative lighting. The movements of the characters interlace as they navigate the stage, somehow managing to maintain the illusion of separate existences. The color blue pervades the lighting scheme, which fades in dream-like sequences when Emily (Leslie Klug, DC '00) sings and suddenly brightens as Norbert lights a cigarette. As can be observed in the floor pillows, the white rug, the center platform, the mini-bar shelves, and four hanging background boards, Laura Crescimano's, BR '00, unique set design is as dominated by squares as the Yale Tory Party. The open space of Whitney Humanities Center's converted gymnasium may be an unlikely location for staging a play, but it assists the mobility of the actors, who are often all on stage at the same time.

While they are always together physically, throughout the play the characters must strive to connect emotionally in a world that is laden with incoherence and incomprehension. "I'm tired of people with nothing in their faces," Emily sings. Lucas' characters reach out to communicate, then draw back behind the blank veils of vodka, cigarette smoke, television screens, and muffling headphones. Yet, as Emily's lines convey, the desire to express and to understand somehow overwhelms all fear and antagonism. "I wish everyone was made of glass," she recites. "I wish everyone had a little window you could just crawl right in."

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