Review
Animals Out of Paper
McGinn/Cazale Theatre (Second Stage)
August 14, 2007
Morgan Wycksmwycks@nyconstage.org
In the wispy-slick production of the overloaded and almost twee play, Animals Out of Paper, playwright Trajiv Joseph at least holds our attention by keeping his story moving along, evolving as it goes, with a good sense of humor. But like his play, All This Intimacy, also produced by Second Stage's Uptown Series, the metaphors often outweigh his characters.
Ilana is an origami expert. She's so successful at the craft that she's been tapped by cardio-thoracic medical scientists to design a perfectly folded paper-like plastic heart casement for patients with conditions conducive to coronaries. Recently separated from her husband, she now lives in a windowless apartment where disorder is the rule. One wet and rainy night, the Treasurer of the American Origami Society, Andy, arrives at Ilana's apartment in fear that Ilana is leaving the organization creating a major tear in the delicate fabric of the society's annual convention. His ulterior motive, however, is to try and convince her to tutor his high school student, Suresh, who understandably has shut down after his mother was killed in a hit and run accident. Suresh, a whiz kid in apparently all things, can look at a flat, blank piece of paper and almost intuitively know how to fold and shape it into an amazing work of origami art. Andy also has another ulterior motive and that is to act on his crush on Ilana. Reluctantly agreeing to take on Suresh as a pupil, Ilana's first scheduled encounter sets off the wrong kind of sparks. Suresh is too smart, too rad, and too emotionally volatile for Ilana to handle, especially in her own raw condition. If it weren't for the sensitivity that Suresh displays to his father and siblings (a conveniently overheard phone call), Ilana would permanently banish him. In the meantime she starts dating Andy. Suresh excels so much with his origami pursuits that it becomes, with Andy's blessing, his senior project and also gets him invited by Ilana to accompany her to an international origami conference in Nagasaki, Japan. Things take an unexpected turn and the plot folds in on itself.
The three characters are all given equal parts assets and debits. Suresh is down with hip-hop and urban street talk as well as coming-of-age wonderments and embarrassments. Andy carries with him, since the age of 12, a diary of his blessings (currently up in the 8,000's) which include blessings that initially arise from unhappy events. However, his luck in the romance department has been unsuccessful to non-existent. Ilana also has a knack for finding the positive in life despite a negative attitude. Having a habit of losing things - cherished items, her husband, her 3-legged dog who, Lassie-like, once saved her life, she finds a way of replacing them in origami efforts, however paper-thin. Lately though she has stopped her art altogether except for her work on the heart.
Mr. Joseph can pen very funny dialogue and create full-blooded characters and place them in often comical circumstances. But he loads so much metaphor and symbolism into his writing that his characters' and their stories' collapse is inevitable. It's a bit much that Ilana is working on a protective sheath for the heart and that on Valentine's day with a paper heart in hand, Andy proposes to her. One even waits for lines like "folds create scars" and other such pithy saws that arrive like clockwork. Some of the metaphors even confuse as when Suresh makes crows out of origami doves at a memorial tribute to, I gather, Nagasaki A-Bomb victims. His point has something to do with dead means dead. And it's not for nothing that a giant origami hawk hangs over the center of Ilana's apartment, but what that "not for nothing" is is open to interpretation. There's more but I've already given too much away. Let's just say the final confrontation isn't exactly merited and leaves one slightly perplexed.
Beowolf Boritt's clever set uses large sheets of paper as backdrops and in them are slight creases that may represent sun rays and cityscapes. He also tucks a few surprises into a small stage that is effectively lighted by Josh Bradford. Amy Clark costumes the characters perfectly from Suresh's loud and garish video-rapper wear to Ilana's pleated, multi-folded and sectional attire. Director Giovanna Sardelli zips things along and steers her cast clear of the more cloying parts either by having the actors playing against them, downplaying them or, in the right moments, going all out for them without irony. The actors walk this tightrope delightfully and sell it for everything they can get. Utkarsh Ambudkar's Suresh succinctly captures that teenage know-it-all bravado attached to the awkwardness of first-time experiences. It is a charm unlimited performance. As Andy, Jeremy Shamos gives this everyman/nobody such a reason to be somebody that he wins us over completely. He smartly evades the drippy pathos of his "diary" that so easily could have reared its head, and only in the final scene does he land on shaky ground as do the others. Kellie Overbey as Ilana is on stage almost throughout the production and occasionally gets ahead of her own usually excellent comic timing. But she's not afraid to let the character be disliked which pays off immensely as the play moves forward.
It is the cast and its director that give Animals Out of Paper such heart, sheathed or otherwise, and I do look forward to Mr. Joseph's next work. He knows how to write. If only he could let the metaphors and symbols evolve more naturally and less overbearingly, his efforts might not end up like my own with origami - a crumpled-up sheaf.
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