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The Belonging
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Acosta, Leigh
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By Dave DePino
In actor/playwright Joe Acosta's positively riveting play, The Belonging, we are brought to a state penitentiary where we find a man who is being punished twice. First he is being punished by the system for killing his father ten years earlier when he was only nineteen, and second, and most severely, he is punishing himself. Acosta is an exemplary prisoner. In a decade, he has made no friends, no enemies, and no waves. He keeps to himself and does what he is told. He seems content to live out the rest of his life in prison. Any effort to break through the heavily insulated wall to his emotions is met with complete and total hostility. Even attempts for contact by his mother and young sister have been refused. Their visits are disallowed by the prisoner himself; years of letters sent by his sister Anna (Cricket Leigh)are returned unopened.
The death of Jack's mother brings Anna to the prison to plead with the warden (Dana J. Kelly) to release him for several hours so he can attend their mother's funeral. The warden is cautiously amenable, with questionable approvals by the prison shrink, Ben (Bobby Jasmin), and Jack's somewhat protective cellblock prison guard Mike (Shayne Anderson). The final decision, however, will be up to Jack.
Why would a man who has shut out his family as well as the entire world consent to re-enter it just to have to turn around and return to the emptiness and bleakness of a cell? And, how would he handle seeing his dead mother and his sister who is now twenty? Will his pseudo-tough exterior crack? Will he have to face and do battle with the old demons once again? Will the young boy who played the knight in shining armor and protector of his little sister have to relive the fact that he just wasn't big enough to save her from their father's abuse? Jack lives in guilt, not of killing his father, but in the guilt that he failed Anna. Will the past surge once more into his frazzled brain, which is ready to short-circuit and either explode or implode? In any case, this turn of events is about to change, irrevocably, the future Jack had planned for himself.
This work is an expanded version of Acosta's award-winning, one-act play. The script presents some intense and wonderfully rendered scenes involving the three men, as well as scenes with the men and Anna, but when Anna finally comes face to face with her brother, you will freeze; you will hear your heart pounding in your chest. This is one of the few moments when you can honestly say this is theatre at its best. Kelly, Jasmin, and Anderson do good work here as men with various agendas and conflicting ideas of how to help this tortured man. But it is Leigh who will absolutely break your heart as she begs for her knight to return to her. And, Acosta, as rigid as steel, cold as ice, is astonishingly pliant when his protective walls are smashed by love. He is truly terrific. Adam Webster, who staged the original shorter piece, returns as director with his attention very targeted, unobtrusive, and paced with precision.
Alas, nothing is one hundred percent perfect, and one might suggest a small bit of trimming to sustain the powerfully compelling emotional buildup to meltdown. Also, the scene changes of the very few set pieces are clunky and performed by the actors themselves. This is very disconcerting to the superb fluidity the drama achieves. Perhaps a smaller prison cot left in place and covered and a desk on casters would help dearly.
Performing at the East Theater at The Complex, 6468 Santa Monica Blvd., theatre row in Hollywood; Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 7 p.m.; through February 2. Tickets $15 general, $12 senior/students, call 323/969-4601.
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