May 13, 2005
THEATER BEAT
Villains don't believe they're bad guys. But in Norman Lock's
unfailingly bleak "The Contract," now in a crisp premiere by the
Laurelgrove Theatre Company, the heavy is shop steward/hit man Walt (Shaunt
Benjamin), and he has a more nuanced perspective. "We're all filth,"
he pronounces at one point.
Walt pronounces a lot, in fact, in the course of his elaborate wooing
of the chemical plant's new hire, Dave (Rob Tepper), a meek, shaggy innocent
who seems powerless to resist. Sex, capitalism, politicsÑno topic is beyond
Walt's all-encompassing, and unremittingly acid, discourse.
Lock should probably have kept a lid on Walt, because heÑand the
inexorable march to perdition he representsÑdominate and determine "The
Contract," to the exclusion of all other possibilities. We know too early
that the hard-up Dave will succumb to Walt's poisonous, Mafia-style economic
logic and that Dave's hopeful wife, Kathy (Nina Hauser), will be much the worse
for it, no matter how she protests.
And we know she won't get much help from Walt's pliant, battered
wife, Irene (Catherine Carlen), who matter-of-factly embodies the worst of
suburban myopia, bigotry and complacency. There's just no upside in this
portrait of small-town fear and loathing; new arrivals Dave and Kathy have no
choice, it seems, but to sink into the polluted sludge.
The opening-night cast (which alternates with another cast) is
extraordinary, under Jack Heller's finely shaded direction. But no amount of
shading can add suspense to this downward spiral. "The Contract" is
too much of a done deal.
"The Contract," Laurelgrove Theatre Company at
the Hollywood Court Theatre, 6817 Franklin Ave., Hollywood, inside the United
Methodist Church. 8 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 29.
$20. (323) 692-8200. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.