Plays with titles like Scaring the Fish have a strange effect on me: They arouse all sorts of protective instincts in response to what I'm afraid is an automatic (negative) reaction. I become grimly determined, as though with enough effort I'll be able to sublimate this feeling before entering the theater. Then comes a good deal of free-floating speculation about how such a title made the final cut. I imagine late, late nights, and a playwright (Benjamin Bettenbender, in this case) struggling to arrive at something that will illuminate the theme without tipping the plot; something deliciously provocative and hopefully naughty; a title that captures the sense of danger he hopes will thrill the audience. Scaring the Fish! But then cold, hard, unforgiving daylight dawns, and in my imagined universe, Scaring the Fish disappears with the shadows on the wall.
Title aside -- it turns out to refer to all the shouting that quickly gets under way -- the production itself, now being given its world premiere at the Magic Theater, carries considerable authority. The ambitiously conceived set -- an autumnal landscape interrupted by concretelike pathways, designed by Richard S. Brown -- is provocative and encouraging. As is the play's pedigree: Scaring the Fish is a co-production of the Magic and the Lab, a New York-based company whose founders include playwright Lanford Wilson, Circle Repertory Theater Artistic Director Marshall W. Mason, and film director Sidney Lumet.
But then a strangely ineffectual-looking man wanders onto the stage -- he turns out to be Chris, portrayed as a relentless naif by David Arrow. His studied attempt to avoid looking at the audience, together with some determined swiping at imaginary insects, is such a transparent exercise in Acting, the sense of dread returns and is not so easily banished this time.
Scaring the Fish (directed by Michael Warren Powell) is a melodramatic moment in the lives of three men, co-workers in a large New York City office. Chris, the pre-show wanderer; Dennis (Rob Sedgwick), a strapping blond bully in a tank top; and Gene (Lou Sumrall), the supervisor who has set this trip up ostensibly as an exercise in departmental bonding. But it turns out that Dennis and Chris are the only two men he invited. Gradually it's revealed that the trip is a ploy to get Dennis off in the woods and "clear the air" about Gene's extramarital romance with Dennis' wife, Carol. It seems Dennis and Gene have not been on speaking terms for ages, at least not since Dennis' unexpected and sudden marriage. There are hints of prior involvement between Gene and Carol, and Dennis makes it very clear by brandishing a big (I mean big) bowie knife that he still feels hostile toward Gene. That Gene returns the compliment is indicated lateish in the proceedings when he pulls out a gun. But why Chris, who seems friendless and downright incompetent, was selected as the buffer remains unclear.
The play covers territory ordinarily thought to be reserved for women, and I suppose the clumsy attempts of these men to exhibit what is, after all, human emotion (not restricted to women) is what has attracted so much attention in its rather long development process. It's a Robert Bly-Men's Movement kind of play. For all their macho strutting and fretting, these men's need for love and understanding is all too obvious, and they all seem nanoseconds away from drumming or hugging. Chris even protests using bug repellent for fear of hurting the mosquitoes. That he doesn't mind slapping them never seems to pose similar moral or ethical concerns, but never mind.
Bettenbender's script huffs and puffs and pummels us with words like "fuck" and "shit" (sometimes even "fucking shit"), as if to convince us of how Serious and Dramatic this manly look at love and marriage is. Unfortunately the actors get caught up in the same posturing and merely echo the melodramatic tone rather than illuminate the play.
Initially Arrow's Chris is so fussy and timid I wondered if he was supposed to be mentally incompetent. He greets Dennis, the second to arrive, with booming enthusiasm that quickly turns to childlike terror (he says he's got allergies) when Dennis forces the repellent on him. They've come to a remote lake in New Hampshire to go fishing, but Chris has no equipment: He can't bear to think of hurting the fish with those nasty hooks. He accepts a beer and settles in even though Dennis pulls his knife out in an obvious threat. (That's not all that's obvious about the knife, but let's leave Freud out of this.)
Gene arrives, and in spite of Sumrall's crafty and initially subtle performance, the posturing continues. Besides getting the bare outlines of information about Dennis' marriage and Gene's distress about that marriage, we learn that Chris is a widower; that his marriage was brief but extremely happy; and that he cannot even imagine casual sex with an interested woman at the office.
Unfortunately we learn little else in the course of the 90 minutes. Bettenbender mistakes repetitious dialogue for dramatic development, so that we get exchanges on the order of, "What do you think?" "What do I think?" "That's right, what do you think?" Director Powell seems just as devoid of ideas, so the three amigos are relegated to what they seem to regard as devastating repartee followed by punctuating sucks on their beer bottles. The only hint of action comes when, in turn, each threatens to take his cooler and leave. It comes as absolutely no surprise that these exits are easily circumvented.
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