Tragedy comes in many forms. One of them is the play Love Alone by Deborah Salem Smith, brought to life recently on the Ubu’s Other Shoe stage at SLO REP in downtown San Luis Obispo.
The drama weaves together the stories of two families affected by the same tragedy: the death on the operating table of a 48-year-old woman during what should have been a routine procedure.
Her family—including her partner Helen and daughter Clementine—represents one side of this tragic coin. The other side is portrayed by one of the doctors on her surgical team, Becca, and Becca’s husband.
The playwright’s set-up, depicting the sometimes unbearable consequences of the precipitating incident, requires both families to appear onstage at times separately and at other times together, often with overlapping dialogue.
The effect of this juxtaposition works in uniting the grief that affects both families, and in this case director Rosh Wright has managed to bring an excellent cast together in service of the playwright’s intentions.
Kudos to the cast and crew for bringing their best to the final show of the Ubu’s Other Shoe season.”
Sophie Rhiannon as Clementine, Alicia Klein as Helen, and Danielle Dutro as Becca shoulder the toughest workload of the emotions running throughout the play, displaying the grief, doubt, anger, regret and loss called for by the script with impressive depth (even while holding scripts in their hands in this staged reading).
Jude Walker, Matt Smith, Valerie Pallai, Adam Nason and Andrea Bowers—each and every one—brings a substance and presence to their supporting roles. It would have been intriguing to see this entire group of players in a full production of Love Alone.
That being said, I’m not sure that Smith’s play itself deserves a full-blown finished production. In many ways her script seems a bit pat, trying to summarize a very complex issue often to the detriment of nuance and individual characterization.
It’s a coherent exploration of cause and effect that a tragedy of this kind can inflict on human beings, but it proves unsatisfying in the end in terms of probing the depths of emotion that it should call forth in individual characters. The title itself presents something of an unfinished puzzle: What does it mean or imply? “Love alone . . . is enough?” “Love alone . . . isn’t enough?” “Love alone . . . unites us?”
Kudos to the cast and crew, however, for bringing their best to the final show of the Ubu’s Other Shoe season. Love Alone proves an adroit season finale for a series that brings thoughtful and often provocative ideas forward for our consideration and contemplation.