Slowgirl – 2013
Image © Michael Brosilow
Emotional Walk Through the Labyrinth of Guilt in Steppenwolf’s “Slowgirl” by Hedy Weiss – Sun Times
‘SLOWGIRL’
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
When: Through Aug. 25
Where: Steppenwolf Theatre Upstairs, 1650 N. Halsted
Tickets:$20-$78
Info:(312) 335-1650; www.steppenwolf.org
Run time: 90 minutes with no intermission
Guilt is a subversive emotion. It may lack the red-hot flamboyance of rage, or the all-devouring quality of envy. But the more you might try to run from it, hide from it or bury it, the more it tends to lurk in the shadows until you confess, assume responsibility, come to terms with the consequences of your actions. Even then, guilt has a way of not quite letting go.
Greg Pierce’s two-character play, “Slowgirl,” now receiving an intense production in Steppenwolf’s Upstairs Theatre, is an anatomy of guilt. And under the sensitive direction of Randall Arney, two marvelous actors — William Petersen and Rae Gray — deliver finely tuned, often surprising performances.
The circumstances of the play, like its setting, are extreme. Becky (Gray), is a smart, uninhibited, quietly terrified 17-year-old from a well-to-do family in the Boston suburbs. She is in serious trouble. But before she is to face the music for her behavior, and its dramatically unintended consequences, she has been sent to a remote little town in Costa Rica to spend a few days with her uncle, Sterling (Petersen), a middle-aged man, long estranged from her family because of a financial scandal.
Sterling has been living a very quiet, inward-looking, largely isolated rural existence, and has found a certain degree of peace. He is no angel, but he is far from the madding crowd, the broken marriage and the bad reputation that has left enduring scars. His exile is both a relief and a self-inflicted punishment.
Becky, compulsively talkative and brashly frank in that of-the-moment, “say anything” way that is more of a protective wall than might immediately be apparent, could well be facing manslaughter charges and prison time. She was at an alcohol-fueled house party that went out of control. She also was caught on video as the “slow girl” of the title — one of her school’s lonely outcasts who unknowingly gulped down far too many Jello shots, and was euphoric about just being part of the party — leapt from a window.
Initially, Sterling is awkward and unsure about how to deal with Becky, though clearly he understands her pain. Becky, quietly terrified, and torn between denial and stark reality, is all adolescent swagger at first, though gradually she awakens to the fact that her indulgent, careless behavior has altered several lives, including her own, forever.
In a handful of scenes that unspool in just 90 minutes on designer Takeshi Kata’s elegantly minimalist set (with Richard Woodbury’s sound conjuring parrots and iguanas), these two people from different generations make a crucial connection. Pierce captures his characters’ voices ideally and the actors follow suit.
Petersen suggests Sterling’s interior struggles with a wonderful sense of hard-won calm and understatement. The girlishly sexy Gray, sublimely watchable, is a young actress of remarkable talent and smarts. And the intriguing chemistry between these two masters of the intimate stage is delicious to observe.
Generosity abounds in Simmering Performance – Chris Jones – Chicago Tribune
A few years back, in a sleepy hotel bar in Costa Rica, I found myself in one of those late-night conversations in which it felt like my new friend was not telling the whole truth. No doubt the history of this genial, white-haired American emigre was benign, but, still, I remember wondering about his real story, as distinct from the one he was telling me.
The character played by William Petersen in Greg Pierce’s “Slowgirl” — the brief, small-scaled, gently paced and modestly affecting summer drama at Steppenwolf Theatre — is intended to be not unlike that guy: a likable man with a past, and, perhaps, a desire to leave something behind. Such characters are not easy to play, but Petersen is not only the kind of bankable name you need to draw people to a dog-days show with such a seemingly soporific title, he is also an actor of striking range. Those who think of him as perennially raging in the belly of some criminal beast will be struck here by Petersen’s thoughtfulness and apt reticence in forging Sterling, a quiet former lawyer who has withdrawn into the Costa Rican jungle for reasons that take a while to emerge and who now spends his time listening to the iguanas sharpening their toes on his hot tin roof.
The inciting incident in this 90-minute, two-character play — seen at New York’s Lincoln Center in 2012 and directed at the Steppenwolf by Randall Arney — is the sudden arrival from the U.S. of Sterling’s 17-year-old niece, Becky (Rae Gray). She’s been sent down by her mother after she lands in “some trouble,” the nature of which also takes a while to emerge but involves an incident at a recent teenage party gone awry. And thus the playwright Pierce has stuck two wounded souls of different generations together, leaving them to try to connect, to sort each other out and find a way to mutually face the challenges of the present.
This is hardly the most original idea in the dramatic universe, and “Slowgirl” reveals no huge surprises. But although conventionally structured, and a piece that simmers rather than boils throughout, it is an engaging, compassionate and well-written character study. And, as it unpacks itself, you’ll likely find yourself touched by how well it charts the loving complexities of families. More interestingly yet, Pierce also touches on how terrible things can happen in our lives at different speeds.
Sometimes, hell arrives in a youthful moment, changing everything forever. Sometimes, the bad is there all along in our professional lives, but we just prefer not to notice.
“Slowgirl” is, to a great extent, about what we do when we’ve realized the inevitability of life’s capriciousness, and if — and then how — we try to set things right. It is also an opportunity to really enjoy Petersen’s work: His, truly, is a very generous performance, seemingly crafted to allow young Gray, still a college student, to take the spotlight, which also happens to feel like what his character actually would do.
Gray, a very talented and honest young actress with a raft of credits, is not ideally cast here. She plays her Becky very much as an awkward, deeply troubled teen, still emerging from adolescence. That’s part of her picture, for sure. But the script also implies a popular, self-confident, privileged leader whose entire peer-fueled, myopic universe has suddenly collapsed in totem. Under Arney’s otherwise clear-eyed direction (without fuss; with the help of designer Takeshi Kata, he makes the tricky, alley-style staging in the Upstairs Theatre work), Gray’s characterization more implies this is just one in a likely series of crises in this girl’s life, and that reduces the stakes of what just went down back home.
Still, that issue (and one needlessly rushed intimate scene) notwithstanding, Gray paints an empathetic character whose late-in-the-play monologues are truly moving. And as she spills her guts, you can see Petersen listening in the corner, brow furrowed and heart engaged, feeling her pain.
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