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Save the date
The two women in "Seeing Each Other" get several chances to redo their disastrous blind date in a fun exploration of how personalities clash and, however improbably, come together.
By KRISTINA FELICIANO
Offoffoff.com
If you want to go on a fun blind date — as opposed to
the usual, torturous kind — get yourself over to the
amusing and often spot-on "Seeing Each Other: A
(re)Visionary Blind Date." In the cool dark of the
tiny Collective Unconscious performing space, you can
sit comfortably, alone even, and watch as two other
people small-talk their way through a first meeting in
a restaurant. Let them worry about whether they're
drinking too much or too little. About whether or not
their job is sufficiently impressive, their ideas too
progressive, too trite, too naive.
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And when at first
they don't succeed, you can watch as the scene is
"rewound" and they try again and yet one more time.
Because these women (a word to the narrow of mind:
If you dislike the idea of two ladies fancying each
other, you might just want to stick with your Eminem
collection and forgo this show) benefit from the
second (and third) chances that occur too infrequently
in real life but that make entertainment such a
welcome and necessary escape. And, yes, there is a
happy ending. Guess writers and co-stars Sandra Alland
and Heather Lash figure most people have enough drama
in their love lives without having to see it on stage.
The minimalist set features a table, a couple of
chairs, a few glasses filled alternately with red
wine, water, and Scotch, a microphone, and, in the
beginning, Bruna, a crewcut-wearing,
nose-stud-sporting, leather-jacket-donning romantic
hopeful anxiously awaiting the arrival of Timmie, her
blind date. Playing in the eatery is possibly the best
soundtrack for her or anyone's love's labors: the
Smiths, New Order, Culture Club. In fact, the
best-of-the-'80s music in this show alone is enough to
recommend it.
Bruna can be a bit abrasive, probably a product of her
defensiveness, to borrow a bit of the lesbian
psychology that colors the women's exchanges. (More on
that later.) When Timmie flutters in, 10 minutes late,
tall, winsome in a Drew Barrymore-meets-Karen O way,
affectless, and craving chamomile tea and mixed
greens, Bruna reaches for her cigarettes, her house
red, the drugs she keeps in her biker jacket, and her
sarcasm. Needless to say, they won't be deciding on
where to have brunch the next day.
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| So much analysis, so much talking, the
parsing of every word. It's a wonder Timmie and Bruna,
and women like them, could ever agree on a place to
meet, let alone embark on a relationship. | |
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Not that they both don't imagine what it might be like
if they did get together. Conceived with a moviemaker's storytelling sensibility, "Seeing Each Other"
features cleverly employed filmic "fantasies" that
allow the characters to go places in their mind that
they won't be visiting in actuality. The fantasies
come in the form of short films that play on a large
screen above the stage; absurd and a combination of
the characters' worst fears and most ardent wishes,
they're like the imaginary sequences in "Ally McBeal"
when that show was still funny. In the first movie,
they go dancing in a club, and the butch Bruna tries
mightily to seduce Timmie with her gyrations and her
Disco Sucks T-shirt.
But in the end, Bruna and Timmie are too different to
even have a peaceful meal together, and Timmie storms
out, offended by what she sees as Bruna's callousness.
Enter the waiter — the show's narrator in the way that
Rod Serling was for "The Twilight Zone." He
metaphorically rewinds the action so that Bruna and
Timmie get to start all over again.
It's not exactly a do-over, though. Both women are a
little changed the second time around. Bruna's less
irascible and even has a different job: She's a
filmmaker rather than a trapeze artist. And Timmie's
darker and less hippy-dippy earnest, even hinting at a
troubled childhood. The point, it seems, is not to
suggest that any two people can make it if they try
hard enough but to show how well or poorly different
people mix. The fantasy this time: The two go home
together and have S&M-flavored sex, as suggested by
the whip Bruna brandishes when they fall into bed at
the end of the movie. Things go better on this date,
but they're still not there yet.
The third, charming time, Bruna's a teacher of English
as a second language, Timmie's a video-store clerk,
and both are open to each other, engaged by each
other, and finally smitten. There are pensive pauses
during which we, and they, watch their unconscious
unspool. Bruna, in a silent-movie-style short, tells a
fed-up Timmie that she's never loved anyone the way
she has her and begs her not to leave, strumming a
song on her acoustic guitar to try to win her over.
But Timmie tells her a song is not enough for her. She
doesn't want words of love; she wants acts of love. In
another film, the women are going to be hanged because
they are gay. It's all as if to say there's no love
connection out there that isn't infused with fear.
But Bruna and Timmie do manage to get it, and each
other, together. By now, audience members of a certain
age will have relived some of their own youthful
highlights, thanks to the smashing songs that amplify
key moments. And everyone would have enjoyed the real
chemistry the actresses have, despite their
characters' missteps. "See Each Other" could be
tighter — maybe a little less about the death
penalty, a subject Timmie and Bruna discuss at length,
never mind that it's not exactly great date fodder —
and the actress who plays Timmie (there were no
programs for the show, so it's not clear if she's
Alland or Lash) doesn't have quite the same
naturalness as her co-star.
But Lash and Alland do give us a window on the
contentiousness of meeting with someone to see if they
might want to lock lips and perhaps link lives. And,
like the funny "Kissing Jessica Stein," they capture
the sometimes-impeding psychology of female
relationships. So much analysis, so much talking, the
parsing of every word. It's a wonder Timmie and Bruna,
and women like them, could ever agree on a place to
meet, let alone embark on a relationship. Of course,
when it does work out, as it does here, the joy is so
great that only the jangling guitars of Morrissey's
most soaring songs can express it. Just don't listen
too closely to the lyrics.
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AUGUST 21, 2002
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK
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