A pair of talking heads, a raging refugee who is fleeing sex slavery, and an intimate bathroom discourse are successively dished up in Fruit Trilogy, a new, 80-minute program of short works composed by Eve Ensler. The creator and guiding force behind that galvanic global phenomenon known as The Vagina Monologues as well as last season’s powerful In the Body of the World, Ensler reaches way beyond her typical documentary format to experiment here with different dramatic styles.
The first piece, “Pomegranate,” is written in the absurd manner of Samuel Beckett: It reveals the heads of two women perched upon some kind of supermarket shelf. Sporting bizarre coiffures and extreme make-up, as well as price tags in their hair, they gabble away at each other in an animated fashion. The women discuss the casual brutality of the men who buy and use them (and apparently other females) and complain how they feel as if their bodies are dead, or at least detached from their minds. They wonder how they are able to endure such maltreatment. Even as they speak matter-of-factly about their hellish situation, banal Muzak-like tunes murmur gently in the background. Suddenly one head vanishes as the other, oblivious, keeps right on talking.
In contrast with the seriocomic opener, “Avocado” is a harrowing monologue by a young woman who is confined within a small, dark, horizontal space that suggests a shipping container. Is she packed aboard a ship? A train? Are there others like her hidden nearby? Is that a baby she hears crying? Whatever, the woman desperately hopes that she is heading to some place better than her previous location, where she was sold by her father to be repeatedly abused as a sex slave. Crouching or huddled or crawling around, the woman speaks rapidly and heatedly as she explicitly describes several tortuous sexual encounters, including her first such experience when she was only twelve years old. Her frightened, frantic, angry rant turns hallucinatory as she sees angels and gradually becomes bathed in a blinding light that may signify she has reached her safe haven or perhaps only the end of her life.
The final work, “Coconut” begins gently and soothingly as a zaftig, middle-aged matron, clad in a flowered robe and a turban, sets out an assortment of candles. Remarking that she has just enjoyed a bath, the woman eventually begins to rub coconut oil into her foot and shin. By now talking directly and confidentially to viewers, she notes how she is engaged “in a transformative process of emollient change” and encourages the audience to echo the phrase with her. As she massages herself with increasing force, the sensual pleasure that she experiences gradually turns into pain and then evolves into a vision of the line of women before her time. Her tirade passes beyond the mythic into the primordial. “I am element and I am memory,” she finally declaims. “I am as alive as fire.”
And then this frenzied celebration of the body and soul slides over into extremes as the woman disrobes and starts to dance, urging viewers to witness and experience the enjoyment she feels. Or something like that. The point of the final sequence of the piece frankly eludes me. The conclusion is disconcerting, rather than what the playwright probably intends to register as an exhilarating culmination for her talkative triptych.
For all that, the sheer fearlessness of Liz Mikel’s performance as the bathroom spellbinder is impressive. Mikel also is blithely chatty as one of those talking heads in “Pomegranate.” Kiersey Clemons offers a more serious presence in the opening work, and she turns into nearly a feral creature during the shrieking terrors of “Avocado.”
This production by the Abingdon Theatre Company has been staged by director Mark Rosenblatt with considerable style: Mark Wendland’s scenic design essentially reduces the stage of the Lucille Lortel Theatre into three differently shaped openings set against darkness. Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s lighting design makes striking use of radiant colors glowing from out of pitch-black surroundings. The sound environments created by Matt Hubbs provide a differently surreal quality for each piece.
One note of caution: The scalding anger that boils over here regarding male brutality towards women may disturb some viewers (I’m talking to you guys), while anyone who cannot abide Beckett or abstract theater modes will not have a good time. Otherwise it is intriguing to see Ensler consider her usual topics such as body image, male violence, sexual freedom, social exploitation, and similar concerns through an atypical dramatic lens. It certainly must be liberating for Ensler to be able to express her concerns so freely.
