Saving words, tossing lemons
This rather funny and absurd line sums up the two-hander Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons written by Sam Steiner, and now directed by Nelsito Gomez and Benjamin Jimenez. (Show runs until July 28.)
The Company of Actors in Streamlined Theater (C.A.S.T.) presents this puzzle of a play as a film and theater hybrid. And it is a clever bid for timeliness.
In its world, the government has imposed a 140-word daily limit on what citizens can say. We watch as the couple Oliver and Bernadette straddle the intensity of this enforced, repressive silence, and the always-throbbing disquiet of their own inner world.
The first few scenes struck me as fast-paced demonstrations of what words could do, of just how much our intimate attachments are held together by language games.
The first few scenes struck me as fast-paced demonstrations of what words could do, of just how much our intimate attachments are held together by language games. The characters fumble for words in a game of Articulate, a fight ensues over the qualifier “really,” and Bernadette fixates on jokes and pet names that Oliver shared with his ex, Julie.
What secret codes give shape to love and poke new wounds? Is it really possible to say things concisely? Steiner’s material seems strongest when it prods at language, telling us that what we do with words, rather than what we say, lending glowing contours to entire relationships and lives.
The storyline is a swinging pendulum. It shuttles almost without signal from before and after the Quietude Bill has been passed, as if asking us to assemble a context out of fragmented one-word replies, or from the fast train of careless words that crash and burn through arguments.
These quick transitions aren’t easy to follow given very few visual cues — and this seems intentional. Production designer Therese Arroyo presents a bare stage.
Apart from a carpet, there are no props, no set pieces, no colored backdrops, no costume changes, despite having the liberty to play with these through film. Its earnest, almost stubborn, insistence on the black box might translate as a curious affectation, or a nostalgic nod to the theater that we miss, but here it serves the story poignantly.
The play makes us cling to the characters’ words alone. It is morning when Bernadette and Oliver say it is; the law is passed through news we don’t see or hear, but only know from their desperate resort to Morse code and abbreviations; the street protests go on in that vast unseen elsewhere and reach us only through Oliver’s speech.
Never mind that his speech routinely jumbles careless truths and thoughtful lies. Without visuals, we are forced to trust, much like the characters in the story. It is the messy stuff of everyday love, but somehow I’m also reminded that the choice to trust is a political one. Consider this: When presented with numbers and words framed as facts, isn’t governance premised on ensuring that we trust?
Lemons leaves me thinking this play is ripe for the moment; but also with the same old sour question: what does it mean to be “timely” now? Is it simply a matter of matching the right piece with the right time?
Gabby Padilla plays the lawyer Bernadette. It is not an easy feat to make this self-assured, frustrating, politically detached character seem likeable, but Padilla performs the role with affecting warmth. Her gentle composure is refreshing against Nelsito Gomez’s fidgety, garrulous Oliver.
A musician involved in protest marches, Oliver has all the zest of a student-debater itching to win a round against his lawyer-partner. But an activist’s committed zeal never quite shines through the role. When the moment comes for throwing the titular lemons, it is Padilla’s restraint that is stirring. It isn’t a brick thrown through the window, meant to break the other; Padilla is generous in showing that her character’s strength, too, is unraveling with each hurl.
Is there a place for tenderness in a repressive regime? A possible family tree for the dystopian Lemons might consist of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984. But even so, the hard lens that Steiner trains on a couple’s crumbling microcosm reminds me more of Jeffrey McDaniel’s poem “The Quiet World.” It also makes me wish the play revealed the same sad tenderness and radical quiet.
At times, the actors seem to rush through the lines and scenes, before the dialogue is allowed to take on a richer texture and contour. Some of the humor and tenderness is lost in this breakneck pace, and it becomes a little hard for me to believe they are in love. (For why must we witness all this crumbling if there is no love to break?)
What is impressive in C.A.S.T.’s adaptation is the playful camerawork (Benjamin Jimenez, Geraldine Candava, Ace Sayat) and deft blocking. It’s all the more remarkable considering that most of the rehearsals were done online. Gomez and Padilla occupy the same physical space but are separated by a split screen.
When a hand wanders accidentally into the other frame, we’re suddenly jolted from the illusion that we’re watching a seamless space. The cameras’ shifting vantage points play up scales, and magnify the growing distance between the two. Even if they are staring at each other, the sightlines don’t meet. With this, C.A.S.T. has created a clever imagery for our times.
Lemons leaves me thinking this play is ripe for the moment; but also with the same old sour question: what does it mean to be “timely” now? Is it simply a matter of matching the right piece with the right time?
Without a doubt, the play speaks to our experience of being physically restricted, being forced to trust, and being made to live with the Anti-Terror Law that targets certain sectors more than others. “It takes more words when you don’t have money,” says Oliver. And I wonder, what does it mean to focus a two-hander on people who do?
In the end, the characters hardly transcend the labels assigned to them. Where Steiner takes a shot at universality, the play lacks a more searing commentary on specific political contexts. It would have been exciting to see how C.A.S.T. could have made stronger interventions to the story. There are many more things to say for sure but, as it is, my word count has run out.
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Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, presented by Stages Sessions, C.A.S.T. PH, Tag PH, and Menez Media, runs online until July 31. To buy tickets, go to: www.instagram.com/cast_ph/ or www.ticket2me.net/e/33402