By Michael J. Toscano
Special to the Washington Post
Thursday, March 22, 2007; VA08
How many stones are too many? Mark Charney gives us an unintended opportunity to ponder this question in "37 Stones," his new play now onstage in a skillfully acted production from Charter Theatre.
The play, subtitled "The Man Who Was a Quarry," uses barbed, often dark, comedy to score points before repetition blunts its effectiveness. Charney deftly demonstrates the pain a lonely and bitter mother inflicts on her earnest and caring son, pain that arrives in the form of excruciating kidney stones. But Charney wallows in dysfunction far too long. In an unwieldy mix, the comedy based on physical pain is quite funny, and the drama based on emotional anguish becomes dreary.
A grown man has had a lifetime of punishment from kidney stones -- 37 by age 44 -- that are linked to his mother's psychodramas. If Charney had kept the play shorter and more focused, say "13 Stones," it might have rocked. As it is, we get so weary of the recurring manipulations of the mother and her grimly enabling sister that we lose patience with the son and his urinary tract issues. Why can't he be more like his breezy brother, who ignores the mother's emotional ploys and, in a satisfying twist of psychological jujitsu, becomes a urologist?
We first meet Mark, played with boyish charm by Michael Skinner, in the form of an offstage primal scream. The scream pierces the darkness and is both unsettling and comic, as Mark struggles with his latest stone. We soon learn that though Mark may be approaching middle age, with a loyal wife, Erin (Sarah Melinda), he's still a mama's boy. Charney takes us back and forth in time, skipping about in Mark's boyhood and adult years in seemingly random order. We see Mark absorb one insult after another to his psyche, wounds that fester and manifest themselves as jagged hunks of crystal in his kidneys.
Charney oscillates between farce and drama. One minute, Mark's brother, Randy (Ray Ficca), is interacting with the audience in the intimate Theatre on the Run, passing around kidney stones and cheerily expounding on their origins. The next, we are spiraling deep into Tennessee Williams territory, with the faded-Southern-belle-mother-from-hell (and the absent father) wreaking emotional havoc on her son. Wife Erin might absent herself so Mark can suffer in private, but mother Edna, played with understated and quite effective malice by Jane E. Petkofsky, is right there in the bathroom with him. Never one to miss an opportunity to castrate a male, she ridicules his manhood as he soaks, naked, in a tub of warm water.
Edna hates all men and has to rely on the kindness of sister Fanny for financial support. Edna is always seen in a housecoat and with a glass of whiskey in one hand; Fanny, played with frightening stoniness by Caren Anton, is dressed stylishly. Still, the two are a match, out to exploit Mark's weaknesses as they exact revenge on men. Petkofsky and Anton play their parts with such vividness that we come to hate the characters quite quickly. Neither has been given any redeeming qualities by the playwright, so we become sick at the sight of them by the second act. It's about then that we start counting stones and imagining cuts in the script.
Director Richard Washer wrings all that is possible out of this play, moving things along at a rapid pace and cleverly animating slow spots by actively moving his actors about the small performance space, which he and set designer Chris Stezin have configured in the round. Still, "37 Stones" is just too much weight to carry.
"37 Stones," performed by Charter Theatre, continues through March 30 at Theatre on the Run, 3700 S. Four Mile Run, Arlington. Showtime is 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, with matinees at 3 p.m. Saturdays. For tickets, call 202-333-7009. For tickets and information, visithttp://www.chartertheatre.org.
