After Ashley is newly formed Portland Playhouse’s first production. And, much like the script they have chosen, the performance is provocative and adept with only slight drawbacks.
After Ashley opens with Ashley Hammond (Tonya Jone Miller) and her son Justin (Tristyn Chipps) watching daytime television. Justin is home with mono and Ashley, a part-time children’s art teacher, is keeping him company.
As the action unfolds, it becomes clear that Ashley has never been a very adept parent, opting instead to treat her son as either an equal or a superior. Justin flips off the television and begins mocking the TV doctor, who named his book after an Eagles’ song and has only a degree in sociology. Ashley uses this opportunity to ask Justin to dispense advice.
Overlooking the absence of absolute agreement, Ashley launches into a discussion of drugs and sex with her 14-year-old son. She describes her marital problems, her husband’s sexual inadequacy and her regrets about not aborting Justin when she found herself pregnant at 19. In the exchange, Justin becomes the parent, alternately soothing and admonishing Ashley.
Into the world that has become defined by Ashley and Justin, steps Alden (Sam Holloway), Justin’s father. Clearly the odd man out, he interacts with the pair in ways that drive home the talk that they have been having in his absence. In any group of three, one person ends up being the outsider. Alden is the outsider.
Between the first and second scene, the audience hears a 911 call that Justin makes to report Ashley’s rape and murder. Refusing to leave her body, even though the perpetrator might still be in the house, Justin repeats over and over again that he will not leave her. It is his character distilled into a moment.
And, as the lights are raised, three years pass and Alden and Justin are guests on David Gavin’s (David Seitz) television show, Profiles in Justice. Alden has written a book, titled After Ashley, and Justin has explored petty crime and substance abuse. As Alden and David explore the formation of a mutual admiration society, Justin wields that oft-used weapon of disaffected youth and hostile sarcasm. The opening scene is wonderful. The actors are natural and the friction is palpable. As the parents fight with their young son curled on the couch mere feet away, there is an urge to jump up and intercede. For any adult whose family engaged in angry recriminations, watching this family interact is painfully real and it is due largely to the powerful acting involved coupled with the intimate space in which the play is set.
Sitting on a loveseat, inches from a performer, changes the performer-audience relationship. Gone are the perfect rows of straight-backed chairs. There are no volunteers at the edges of the set forcing you up the aisles to your seats. Instead, the audience is welcome to traipse through the center of the stage and lounge in worn armchairs and sofas.
Especially in a play that focuses upon the media’s tendency to cannibalize tragedy for television audiences, sitting in an environment that mirrors a living room rather than the formality of a theater further complicates the issues at stake.
Smaller companies often lack the funds and volunteers that allow the visual departments (sets, costumes, props) to excel. This broad generalization definitely holds true for Portland Playhouse.
Props tallied the most consistent errors. Twenty minutes of watching people pretend to drink coffee feels like 20 minutes of watching people pretend to drink coffee. And, when suspension of disbelief is the sworn duty of an audience, it is the theater’s job to facilitate that. Additionally, when a character asks for whiskey and a bottle of Jack Daniels is produced, it shouldn’t be filled with clear liquid.
Costumes, likewise, create inconsistencies, specifically the ones chosen for Julie Bell (Nikki O’Carroll), Justin’s love interest. Presented as a smart ally for Justin when there are no others available, Julie is written as an intellectually sharp English major with emotional problems. Her costumes say: bar trash/hooker.
Picky points aside, Portland Playhouse mounts a stimulating production. Fine performances are given by all. Standouts include Franklin High School senior Chipps as Justin and Steve Boss as Roderick Lord, a man that Ashley takes up with in the final months of her life. It is a character whose one joke role might make it a throwaway. But, Boss lends it a gravity that grounds it when it might otherwise be more caricature than character.
Though media reception, publicity information and playwright Gina Gionfriddo are adamant that the focus of the play should be the media frenzy that so often surrounds tragedy, the story of Justin and his mother is much more compelling.
After Ashley is an apt title. After Ashley, the play loses much of its grace and by the last scene things become downright heavy handed.
In the final scene, one that the play could well have done without, Justin and his girlfriend Julie part ways as Ashley stands behind them. She may be a ghost. She may be his preoccupation. It’s unclear. However, Justin has sacrificed his relationship with his father, he and the girlfriend break up, he has no job, no income, no prospects, and yet his mother is by his side. That’s the real story, and it’s compellingly tragic.
After AshleyPortland Playhouse, 602 N.E. Prescott Ave.Nov. 20-22, Nov. 26-29 and Dec. 3-6Student tickets $10