For a while, Dying in Boulder promises to be a quirky dark comedy regarding mortality, cultural appropriation, sibling conflict, and the eccentric nature of a picturesque Colorado town once dubbed “the city nestled between the mountains and reality.”
The setting for Linda Faigao Hall’s contemporary play, which opened Sunday at LaMama’s Downstairs space, presents a modest Japanese-style garden of rocks and raked gravel in the foreground. Behind it is a living room dominated by large sketches of nude, middle-aged women. Adjoining is a bedroom, which at times is screened by a translucent curtain.
Enhanced by the gentle murmur of Buddhist chanting, the initial atmosphere seems serene.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★ review here.]
This mood is deceptive since Jane (Bernadette Quigley), a painter in her early 50s, apparently is in her final days dying from liver cancer, although she looks to be having a strangely jolly time of it. A former hippie, all tie-dyes and high spirits, Jane is thrilled at the arrival of a pine casket to contain her ashes. She immediately climbs into the box and demands that her family join her in singing Michael Row the Boat Ashore.
The faithful spouse who Jane met in the Philippines, Bayani (Fenton Li) is a mild-mannered Thai chi instructor preoccupied with raking the garden and tending to household chores. Their daughter Nikki (Mallory Ann Wu) is heavily pregnant and missing her absent husband.
Newly arrived is Jane’s younger sister Lydia (Jan Leslie Harding), a semi-famous actor whose career is on the skids. A skeptical New Yorker, Lydia is not entirely convinced that Jane is dying. Lydia also happens to be leery of local New Age-y atmospherics, dubious about Jane’s embrace of Buddhism (“She’s a lapsed Episcopalian from Minnesota, for god’s sake!”), and appalled to hear that her sister plans to be cremated on an outdoors pyre.
Lydia is downright horrified when she learns from Max (Michael Rabe), a bro-type Buddhist monk, that Jane has designated her to be the “death coordinator” who will wash and anoint the corpse and then pack it in dry ice obtained from the local Whole Foods.
Although the playwright seems to be setting up Dying in Boulder as a comedy—the subtitle is (or the perfect place to die if you have good karma!)—the second act gets deadly serious. And not in a good way.
The play turns drearily turgid as Jane’s past alcoholic/druggie excesses are revealed. A flashback shows an incident when 10 year-old Nikki accidentally ingested her parents’ LSD. Long festering resentments between the sisters finally explode into bitter exchanges. Even the garden gets wrecked. The incidental humor that brightened the opening scenes evaporates into discord and corny lines such as “Can’t we stop torturing each other?”
To pursue what proves to be a threadbare story about sisterly ill will resolved in a deathbed, the playwright blows an opportunity to deliver a satirical study in how some people and even some places can casually annex a variety of different cultural traditions to suit their fancies.
A schizophrenic effort that ultimately satisfies neither as comedy nor drama, Dying in Boulder is staged at an easy pace by Ian Morgan, who also is the Associate Artistic Director for The New Group. Under his direction, the actors usually manage to cope with the text’s tonal shifts.
Jan Leslie Harding gives Lydia a scratchy voice and sour facial expressions that suit her astringent character. Bernadette Quigley does not portray Jane as a raging monster so much as a wildly self-involved individual. Making the most of a thankless role, since much of Max’s time onstage is spent passed out on a couch, Michael Rabe’s depiction of a gung-ho Buddhist dude is droll. Neither the husband nor daughter are interestingly developed figures, but Fenton Li and Mallory Ann Wu give each a semblance of life.
Produced by Out of the Box Theatrics in association with La MaMa, the show looks as neatly designed as it is performed. So the karma is fine even though the play goes sadly wrong. Let’s send up a chant that this good energy transfers to the company’s next production that opens in May: The Pink Unicorn, a solo play performed by Alice Ripley.
Dying in Boulder opened March 3, 2019, at La Mama and runs through March 17. Tickets and information: lamama.org
