Past plays haunt 'High'

    By Jerry Stein

    The theater can conjure terrifying darkness even with the lights pushed up to hot white.

    Matthew Lombardo, in his program notes for his play “High” that opened the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park’s 2010-2011 season Sept. 9, has written a semi-autobiographical play about the devastating physical, mental and spiritual destruction that addiction brings.

    Lombardo, last on Broadway with “Looped,” his stage biography of Tallulah Bankhead; offers a harrowing portrait of a young man’s descent into drug abuse. It is as painful as it is riveting. The Broadway-bound “High” is a three-character play that brings Kathleen Turner to the Mt. Adam regional theater’s stage in an impressive performance. She plays Sister Jamison, a foul-mouthed recovering alcoholic nun who has found purpose in her work at a Catholic-sponsored rehabilitation center.



    Only some overt associations with such past plays as “Doubt” and “Equus” brings “High” some mitigated praise than it otherwise would garner.

    Turner, 29 years past playing that plotting sexual furnace Matty Walker in “Body Heat,” has made a commendable transition. The erotic steam that so characterized her screen presence has lifted.

    What is revealed is a maturity that has enabled Turner to bring authority and an underlying compassion to her salty nun. She now has the kind of stage presence associated with that other matured beauty, Vanessa Redgrave.

    Kathleen Turner is joined in this play, which shows great influence of Alcoholics Anonymous principles of recovery, by Michael Berresse (original cast of the musical adaptation of “The Light in the Piazza”). His priest, Father Michael, written a bit superficially in contrast to the other two roles, is strangely intense about keeping Sister Jamison as counselor for a new patient, the young, volatile drug addict Cody Randall (Evan Jonigkeit).

    This young man, played by Jonigkeit with delivery hesitations characteristic of a somewhat fried brain, is walking bad luck. His childhood makes Dickens’ urchins look like characters in farce.
Cody’s father skipped out. His mother was a prostitute. One of her johns sexually abused him.

    The end result is Cody’s ingesting a whole formulary of restricted drugs–crystal meth, heroin. You name it; Cody took it.

    Cody’s profligate life culminates with the mysterious death in motel of his teen ager lover with whom Cody was doing drugs. This sends him to the treatment center in lieu of prison.
“High,” directed by Rob Ruggiero (he also directed "Looped" for Lombardo on Broadway) keeps the reins of dramatic tensions taut. It’s eternally midnight for these lives on stage.

    The troubled Cody has no monopoly on interior devils. In a series of monologues, Turner steps forth in blocks of light and articulates a kind of diary of Sister Jamison's life and addiction.

    And what is behind Father Michael’s unrelenting interest in Cody’s case? Isn’t he just another damaged kid moving through rehabilitation with extremely limited odds for success? No, it’s not that simple.The plot ruptures a bit to give the priest something more than a professional and/or spiritual connection. The twist is a bit convulsive but undeniably surprising just when you start thinking the worst about the priest and his intentions.

    "High” is even more emotionally exhausting than those films about alcohol and addiction, namely, “The Days of Wine and Roses” and “The Man with the Golden Arm.”

    "High" reaffirms that watching addiction being depicted on stage seems more raw, less filtered than images flashing on the same subject through a projector. Thankfully, though, there’s some relief in the onslaughtof humorous darts propelled out of Sister Jamison's mouth.

    Lombardo incorporates the main principles of recovery from AA in his dialog such as references to what recovering alcoholics call a “spiritual awakening" and the importance of a "higher power," a generic term for God. Additionally, there is also much use of the spiritual restoration from the Catholic faith.Yet, visually there is a force in designer David Gallo’s set that manifests itself as a kind of silent, watchful presence as powerful as any dialogue.

    Upstage, Gallo has placed a huge cyclorama of a star-studded night sky that could easily serve as a back drop for Grizabella’s song “Memory” in “Cats.” This serene sky, suggests a watchful God of many eyes peering down, observing this somber pageant of struggling life beneath Him. And He does act.

    The set pieces are all in white–the chairs, the institutional doors, and a huge pair of white brick walls at the bottom of which Cody is seen shooting up. But the wall also suggests those great doors of a cathedral. It is here Sister Jamison conducts a rite that Catholic and Anglican churches call The Reconciliation of a Penitent, an infrequently used kind of confessional. It's a most dramatic scene.

    Gallo’s set with expanses of bare stage is so conversant with the play. It is a striking example of how set can be in a constant dialogue with what is happening in front of it.

    Lamentably, the only real low for "High" is some unwanted associations with past plays This play comes after John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play “Doubt” also containing a brittle nun but not so benign in intent as Sister Jamison.

    Reaching farther back there is most notably Peter Shaffer’s 1973 drama, “Equus.” This play involves a psychiatrist who also engages in self-probing monologues just as Sister Jamison does in "High." He also is treating a most troubled boy who blinded horses.

    And it is even harder to overlook the duplication that "Hifh" shares with "Equus. ” and “Both plays have key scenes in which both boys are fully nude.

    Little if anything is original in the theater or anywhere else for that matter. But surely Lombardo must have been aware of these parallels writing this play. The trick, though, is to be artful enough not to be so similar as to encourage comparisons. Some, perhaps even most audiences, one of which gave “High” and Turner a standing ovation on opening night, may not be aware of these associations with iconic plays or, if they are, won't even care.

    Still, “High” is derivative. Because "High" doesn’t manage to cloak the stage history that haunts it effectively, it cannot escape the label of being just another variation on an extensively treated theme.

    "High" is being presented at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Eden Park, Mt. Adams Tuesdays-Sundays through Oct. 2. Tickets: $25-$64. Reservations: 513 421 3888.

Photo by Sandy Underwood: Kathleen Turner is a nun who treats Evan Jonigkeit in 'High.'