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Opined December 9, 2005
THE OTHER SIDE by Ariel Dorfman, Directed by Blanka Zizka
With: John Cullum (Atom Roma), Gene Farber (Guard), and Rosemary Harris (Levana Julak).
Set Design - Beowulf Borritt, Costume Design - Linda Cho, Lighting design - Russell H. Champa, and Sound
design - Scott Killian.
New York City Center – Stage I (131 West 55th Street). Through January 15, 2006.
I would watch John Cullum and Rosemary Harris open mail. I would watch them unwrap noisy candies on stage as
opposed to in the audience. I would watch them watch paint dry. They are wise and elegant actors.
In this fascinating play they are also in love. A long married couple, they are sensual, excited about being together and
touching one another. They are young and foolish and have been so for many years. They are also a couple whose shack
of a home is on a battlefront, on the border of two fictitious countries. These two people are bombed and battered and do
not think of moving away because they have a son out there in the world somewhere who may return to them any day, as
may the peace. Instead they stay put and get by through the wages they make off of the dead. They collect, catalogue and
bury the bodies from both sides and accept the money the governments offers for this service. For them there is no Other
Side in the war. Only the dead and those willing to pay for them.
Suddenly their lives, as if not disrupted enough, are disrupted even further, not by war, but by peace. It comes in the form
of a soldier who believes that true and everlasting peace can and will be achieved through the creation and maintenance of
borders. Everything will have a place and be contained therein. Except in this case the border passes directly through the
center of the aforementioned shack. Our couple on deathwatch refuse to be separated by a border or a war or the loss of
their son – ain’t no way nothin’ will come between them, not even if it’s someone who reminds them of their son.
Before the show, some audience members asked me what it was about and where it was set. The program gave no hints.
It’s a fictitious country, I said. What about the person named Guard, they asked later on. What was his real name? Was he
their son? That’s up to you I said. Two women on their way out were discussing why the mother acted the way she did.
I loved it, one of them said. It was a little too much for me, said the other. I mean who needs all that war talk right at
holidays anyway?
Who indeed. We who live in a country making illegal war – but it’s far far away, isn’t it? Not so far when you see this
piece. When I entered the theatre and saw the set, my first thought was that something terrible had happened, and the
curtain would be late because they had to clean up the mess. Beowulf Borritt’s excellent design is that disquieting. As the
story develops, the set nearly becomes the supporting cast.
It’s an absurdist play. Think Beckett. Think Churchill. Think Albee. Or don’t think at all, and let it fling itself at you. It
will leave marks. Just as it should.
© 2005 Tulis McCall