'Facing East' an edgy, thought-provoking play
Jackie Houchin
July 16, 2008
The play, written by Carol Lynn Pearson, presents a bold and often uncomfortable picture of a Mormon couple´s intense grief, guilt and resentment following the suicide death of their homosexual son.
The Mormon Church´s stand is that while they can accept the person, homosexual activity is a serious sin. The son had struggled to deny his sexual leanings, but had eventually given in and taken a lover. Unable to deal with the excommunication that followed, he killed himself.
Neil Miller and Toni Trenton play Alex and Ruth McCormick who struggle with the searing question, "Did our faith kill our child?"
In a vaguely ethereal setting at the gravesite (reminiscent of a Japanese painting with its translucent screens, slim branches of silver Eucalyptus and stark black rectangle sunken at center stage) the husband and wife remember their son and question their actions.
Alex, unhappy with the funeral just ended, wants to have another service that "speaks the truth" with an "honest obituary." He begins to preach to the nearby trees about a son who died from a "self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."
A quick flashback shows him as the popular "One-Minute Dad" instructing men via short radio clips how to be good fathers to their children. "I should have spoken to them about gay sons!" he cries in anguish.
"I didn´t know him!" he mourns. "I should have accepted him for who he was!"
Ruth, with the open grave between them, separating them, tries to override his harshness with, "All the graves face east, towards the rising sun… towards the resurrection" and "Andrew means manly, and he was…mostly."
She recollects teaching her son about gardening and baking bread and encouraging him to play his Cello, wondering now if that´s what "turned" him. Was it a bad hormone in her womb? Or was it because she raised him a devout Mormon? "If we were wrong, then my whole life is a waste and I want to be in the grave with my son."
"I can´t stop thinking what that man was doing with our son," she anguishes.
Then Marcus (played by Jonathan Edward Brown) arrives at the grave, devastated but glowing over "how beautiful" Andrew was. He piles further guilt upon the couple with, "You and your church made him… and destroyed him!"
Recalling life with Andrew, Marcus tells of a camping trip they had together (in a very intimate flashback that may make some viewers uncomfortable).
How the story is resolved - or left unresolved - is what carries the audience out of the theater - either in silence or with boldly voiced affirmation – each with what surely will be the topic of conversation for days.
The play is presented without intermission, entirely at the gravesite, although there are tightly spotlighted flashbacks depicting memories of Andrew with the people who loved him.
The actors all give strong, flawless, and powerful performances evoking emotions that wrench the heart. The issues presented in "Facing East" will touch every person in the audience with either empathy or distain.
"Facing East" plays Friday and Saturday nights at 8:00 pm and Sunday´s at 3:00 pm now through August 3.
Admission is $20.
Call for reservations: (626) 292-2081 or visit www.stillspeakingtheatre.org
The theater is located at 2560 Huntington Drive in San Marino, CA 91108 with free parking.