A distinctive writer whose works tend towards the surreal and poetic, Len Jenkin has composed over two dozen plays including Dark Ride (1981) and American Notes (1988) during a long, award-winning career. In his latest play, How Is It That We Live or Shakey Jake + Alice, Jenkin offers a quiet little love story that magically extends beyond humdrum existence.
Lovely actors both, Fred Weller and Kate Arrington portray the title couple in the production that opened last Friday in an 80-seat space at the A.R.T./New York Theatres complex. The show is presented by The Tent Theater Company, recently co-founded by Tim Sanford, the former longtime artistic head of Playwrights Horizons, along with Aimée Hayes, who directs this first-rate New York premiere. The Tent’s mission is to support and present fresh works by veteran playwrights who are above the age of sixty. Speaking as a reviewer beyond that marker, let me say I think it’s a grand idea.
Call it Shakey Jake for short, Jenkin’s 90-minute piece easily relates the tale of a later twentieth century white Middle American couple in three episodes traced from their rainy night romance as teens through the twilight close of their lives; theirs ultimately proves to be a mundane if devoted relationship in spite of a long gap as Alice goes away to college and Jake wanders off to distant places. Some 15 years later, Jake shows up on Alice’s doorstep. Sitting on lawn chairs and looking up at the cold stars above, they drink wine and share how their lives apart have turned out. “Alice, what do you make of this floating world?” asks Jake. “A thousand years whirl away on the wind, and here we are.”
Expect no surprises or blazing drama here. What gives Shakey Jake its potency and unusual charm is the poetic way the playwright infuses his comfortably familiar story with magical realism. Another man and woman pop up now and again as several fantastical characters – Clarence, the one-legged doorman of a Russian nightclub and Snake Hips, a femme fatale in black leather, among others – whose fleeting interactions with Jake and Alice speak to the music of the spheres, the timelessness of love and similar mythical ruminations that elevate the play. Fancifully dressed by designer Clare Lippincott, this fluid twosome also functions as not entirely reliable narrators, whose descriptive language further heightens the drama’s lyrical qualities. Let’s not attempt to detail the play more; term such doings magical realism or surrealism, the genre is delicate stuff, but Jenkin gently and sweetly conjures it up for Shakey Jake.
The Tent’s production, sensitively directed by Aimée Hayes, supports the play with blue moonlight from designer Mary Louise Geiger and very subtle sound design by John Kilgore. Hayes stages the action with spectators seated on low risers at opposite sides of the playing area. Above the action, scenic designer Alexander Woodward has suspended a long, beautifully weathered tree limb that might suggest the way one’s life may twist yet endure over the years. Beneath its branches, Jason Bowen and Delfin Gökhan Meehan lend melodious voices and playful attitudes to their ageless, magical beings. In contrast, the performances by Fred Weller and Kate Arrington appear ultra-natural as they first dance around romance and later wise up to eternal love.
