Critic’s Pick
At the beginning of Where Edward Went we meet Denny (Ben Dudley), a young man in the midst of filming a documentary, asking members of couples to tell him about falling in love. The question is first asked of a middle-aged couple on film and later to Denny’s two roommates, Elyse (MaryKate Moran) and Edward (Aaron Maas) who are engaged. Yet things are amiss: Edward has recently died; Elyse is getting ready to move. And Denny watches the framework of his life — a life built on the idea of the three of them together — start to crumble.
What is fascinating about this play is how Denny comes to realize the distance between his assumptions and reality. He wants to believe that he knows Elyse and Edward intimately, but we learn otherwise. He doesn’t understand why Edward likes to relax on a boat because Edward, in fact, doesn’t understand, any more than Elyse can articulate, how she knows when one of her paintings is finished. Denny is terrified by the ambiguity of all this, because he looked to them to give his life structure, only to discover that each was aimless in his or her own way.
Denny’s unease is also reflected in the answers he gets to his documentary question. He expects Edward and Elyse to talk about falling in love with each other, yet neither does. (Elyse doesn’t even talk about herself.)
Interesting too is how the play suggests that context is everything when it comes to love. Edward recalls a college romance by visualizing the library where they’d meet. Elyse recounts how her parents return to the same spot every 10 years to renew their marriage vows. And the play tells us that whatever tied the three friends together was linked to being together in the apartment where they briefly shared their lives. Denny tries to quantify it with his documentary, but ultimately he learns that love and life just happen, without clean explanations.
The strength of this production is in the quality of the performances and Carter Bratton’s direction. The actors are each excellent, defining characters whose differences made it very clear that, while people might choose to live with each other or even marry, they remain separate, never fully understood by those closest to them.
The use of projections to reflect the view screen of Denny’s camera was amazingly effective, helping create some beautiful stage images, almost as if we were partially seeing into Denny’s mind. In the end, Where Edward Went is a small play with big ideas about love and the need to be connected to people and places. Don’t miss it.
WHERE EDWARD WENT by Untethered Theatre (Cincinnati) will be performed at 7:45 p.m. Sunday, June 1; 7:15 p.m. Tuesday, June 3; 7 p.m. Thursday, June 5; and 3:15 p.m. Saturday, June 7 at Art Academy Auditorium (1212 Jackson St., Over-the-Rhine).
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2014.
