![]() Publisher: Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017. TEN WORD SUMMARY: Inconsistent storytelling hamper choosing whether play is fact or fiction.SEEING LIFE THROUGH PRIVATE EYES: SECRETS FROM AMERICA’S TOP INVESTIGATOR TO LIVING SAFER, SMARTER, AND SANER Truth is impossible, Dietz seems to be telling us, and so our promises to one another should take that into account. The story is steeped in deceit, and it is impossible to apply logic to Matthew’s unraveling spool of evidence. In order for their discoveries to matter to the audience, the revelations need to be clear to the actors, and as of now, the emotional life is drained for some scenes in the middle of the play.ĭietz has called this work a “comedy of suspicion,” and that is apt. They land between wacky and tortured, and at odd times. Either Graham needed to guide his performers to make broader choices, or subtler ones. The others involve years of knowledge being put in jeopardy, and I never got the sense that all of Matthew and Lisa’s philosophizing grew from feeling stuck in their same routines. Real relationships are at stake here, and only one of them is feverish and new. There are elements of danger here, and the destructive impulses all four characters share should not be turned into the same type of meta-theatrical joke Dietz favors in the rehearsal scenes. While the actors are all solid as people who want more than others can give or communicate, I found myself craving more gravity from the production. Were they following set patterns, only to bust out of them later? I could not put the pieces together, as I never noticed a change. Similarly, I was unsure what to make of the characters’ squared off entrances and exits, mirroring the squares of the set design (by Milo Bue and Lee Moore, based on abstract art). Graham excels at comedic character bits, such as the anal retentive addition of dressing to a salad, the transition between fiction and reality is so slippery that at times the emotional arcs can become hard to follow. In order to follow these men and women through all their theatrical twists and turns, you need sharp, bold direction. Shantelle Szyper and Edward Fraim/Photo: Robert Erving Potter III. ![]() The appearance of an actual private eye (Shantelle Szyper) is not even worth batting an eye at she may have a license to kill, but for Matthew, she only represents the possibility of being wanted by a stranger - the same way his wife is wanted by another. Revenge fantasies become mundane lunch hours. Rehearsals become closed door conversations. Each scene eventually reveals itself to be a performance or possibly a figment of our protagonist’s imagination, where nothing is certain for the characters or the audience.Ī large part of why this play can be so thrilling comes from Dietz’s ability to turn one scenario into another with a snap of the fingers or an appearance by the mysterious Frank (David W.M. In reality, the audience watches this conflict unfold as a play within a play within a play within Matthew’s mind. That is the play’s predicament in two sentences, and it lacks color when laid out so bluntly. Adrian and Lisa are having an affair that Matthew knows about, though he refuses to confront the pair. Adrian (Edward Fraim) is their pompous director. Matthew (Kurt Proepper) and Lisa (Megan DeLay) are married actors cast in the same play. While the end product is tonally inconsistent, the dizziness of Dietz’s script means the characters’ desires and doubts linger. ![]() So what does it mean when your lies are accepted, as long as they belong to others? Piccolo Theatre, dedicated to making audiences laugh, attempts to address such thorny issues of intimacy and illusion in their current production of Dietz’s script. In a relationship, truth is often held up as the highest virtue. ![]() But I sensed a delicious irony in the line. It has been stuck in my mind since first seeing the play during my undergraduate education, when I could hardly be expected to understand what it meant. This line of dialogue from Steven Dietz’s “Private Eyes” has always stood out to me. “Lie to everyone but me,” says a husband to his wife. Venue: Noyes Cultural Arts Center (927 Noyes St) Kurt Proepper, Megan DeLay, and Edward Fraim/Photo: Robert Erving Potter III.
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