Review of: Ecstasy

Listing Information

Mike Leigh has come a long way from his roots as a playwright of the emotionally and economically disenfranchised. He has achieved internationally success as an acclaimed film director winning accolades in Cannes (Palme d'Or, 1996) and Venice (Golden Lion, 2004). Yet even as the scope of his art has grown, he has always drawn on the experiences of the English working class and its blue collar milieu in crafting his work. One of the earliest examples of his dramatic work, Ecstasy, is currently getting a stalwart production at the East Village's Red Room.

Set in 1979 in the run down area around London's Kilburn High Street, Ecstasy concerns itself with Jean, a twenty-something young woman whose life consists of drunken one-night stands and working at a local petrol station run by Pakistani's. The play opens with Jean (a suitably depressed Mary Monahan) after sleeping with her sporadic "boyfriend" Roy (Josh Marcantel) who has a child with another woman living around the corner. Jean's main source of companionship is her blowsy neighbor Dawn (the sensational Gina LeMoine) who despite being under 30 has three young daughters. Her no-nonsense, down to earth attitude is a nice counterbalance to Jean's budding manic-depression. Jean is starting to worry about her constant drinking; her only after work activity either in the apartment or at the local pub (Damon Pelletier's set design captures Jean's fragmentation nicely as well).

Several days later while Ray is in the apartment (Jean has just half-heartedly spurned his attempts at sex), Val (Lore Davis) bursts in to start a knock-down fight with Jean.

The second act is basically more of the same as we watch Jean and her friends eke out their lives of quiet desperation. One night at the pub, Jean, Dawn and her husband Mick (an amusing Brandon McCluskey) bring home an old friend Len (an affecting Stephen Heskett) for more drinking. As they imbibe into the wee hours, they dance to Elvis records, talk trash about the influx of immigrants, smoke copious numbers of cigarettes and complain about their dead end jobs (which are often lost due to latent alcoholism). The scene has a tendency to go on a bit too long (a problem with the playwright rather than anything else) but the excellent ensemble sustains our interest and the unexpected background music from the KGB Bar underneath the theater and various police sirens from the street add to the great verisimilitude of the scene. Without ever bringing her name up, the entire production is redolent of Maggie Thatcher and her iron-fisted economic policies (director Sara Laudonia brings attention to as much in her program notes). But due to her skillful handling of the material and her able cast headed by Mss. Monahan and LeMoine, the production could easily be set in urban America today as anywhere else. This Ecstasy is an excellent introduction to the work of Mike Leigh and an even better spotlight on the economic underclass that keeps forging ahead despite the constant odds against them.

...end