2nd Opinion Review: John Patrick Shanley's “Candlelight” at the New Ohio Theatre
Described as “A Nuyorican comic romantic tragedy covered with magic and dipped in Brooklyn blood,” John Patrick Shanley’s bizarre new play “Candlelight” is an ambitious hodgepodge of genre-jumping exuberance that will leave you breathlessly befuddled.
Directed by Lori Kee and playing a limited engagement at the New Ohio Theatre, “Candlelight” begins and ends like a tongue-in-cheek Romeo and Juliet, but what falls in between (delightfully, literally) dances along the line of realism and imagination—even if it doesn’t always hit the mark. Focusing on the worldview and imaginings of a ten-year-old girl pointedly named Esperanza, the play attempts to personify the traumatic effects of loss, abuse, and maturity by hitting you over the head with an increasingly fervent spiral of absurdity and anthropomorphism.
Esperanza just wants to celebrate her birthday with sugar, Snapchat, and swaying with her crush Tito, but the muddied complexities of her reality quickly seep into view with the gauche turn-on-a-dime reveal of her abusive father. Other plot progressions follow clumsily in suit, as we ping pong between Esperanza and Tito’s equally depressing realities. They long to fly away somewhere beyond their earthly troubles, but both seem haplessly nonchalant in their wide-eyed ten-year-old inability to enact true change in their own circumstances.
This unsettling view of the reluctant lack of autonomy in childhood experiences becomes increasingly nonplussed as Shanley navigates elements of magical realism thrown in to exacerbate the children’s’ emotional distress. Anthropomorphic objects in their psyches-- whether Esperanza’s doll, mirror, her mother’s robe, or the devil in Tito’s cooking pot—are at times machinations of the mind, at times free-roaming and free-willed, never fully fleshed out with dramatic purpose beyond peppering the kids’ scenes with absurdism. To touch on Catholic symbolism alongside fairytale borrowings without fully following either of those thoughts to conclusion becomes a frustrating tease scene to scene, as jumpy and chaotic as, well, the thoughts of ten-year-olds unsure of what their psyches are drawing up exactly.
The ensemble of six lend a joyous elasticity to the piece, contorting through the scenes of endearment and absurdity with equal amounts of enthusiasm that leave you rooting for the piece to figure out what it is exactly so they have more room to shine. Like Esperanza, every character at different times in the play instinctively begins to acknowledge that there is magic in being alive, a wildness and ferocity that cannot be contained and deserves to be recognized and worshipped. This duality is highlighted by Wilburn Bonnell’s fiery lighting and Elizabeth Chaney’s scenic design, transforming Esperanza’s deceptively heavenly white bedroom on a dime into a suffocating ward of inner demons.
Shanley’s foray into magic realism is an ambitious nod to a genre defined by marginalized storytellers, where the works of Latin American novelists like Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges paved the way to allow fantasy to coexist with realism, so that boundaries are erased and neither reality nor fantasy is subordinate to the other. Magic realism on stage requires an extra suspension of disbelief, where the re-envisioning of a "reality" dominated by rationalism must balance out with a powerful artistic strategy to challenge the status quo and traditional, Western classifications. Director Lori Kee does a noble job painting a visceral world of mischief and marvel in “Candlelight,” but as the absurdity mounts to increasingly tragic realities, the blurriness of the caricatured characterizations detract from any possible substantive emotional blows.
Just as the character Esperanza is transfixed on her own immediacy, “Candlelight” flits about in every situation with a precocious pre-occupation with posturing potent only in prepubescence. “Candlelight”’s tagline teases us, “What’s deeper and more dangerous than love?” Well, unfortunately not this play.
“CANDLELIGHT”
The World Premiere of John Patrick Shanley’s “Candlelight,” directed by Lori Kee and presented by Nylon Fusion Theatre Company runs at the New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher Street New York, NY 10014) November 27-December 19.
“Candlelight” features John Cencio Burgos, Alfredo Diaz, Ivette Dumeng, Marc Reign, Darlene Tejeiro, and Christina Toth as well as understudies Taylor Graves and Randall Rodriguez.
Scenic/Props Design by Elizabeth Chaney; Costume Design by Janet Mervin; Lighting Design by Wilburn Bonnell; Sound Design by Andy Evan Cohen; Projection Design by Janet Bentley; Assistant Director Michelle Cuizon; Movement by Tatyana Kot; Fight Choreography by Randall Rodriguez.
The performance will run approximately 90 minutes, with no intermission.
For tickets and more information please visit https://www.nylonfusion.org/ and https://newohiotheatre.org/programs/new-ohio-hosts/candlelight/.
Photo of poster design by Miriam Sotomayor.