Review: The Secret Rapture at Trinity Repertory Company

When leaving Trinity Rep's current production of David Hare's Thatcher-era, drama, The Secret Rapture, you may ask yourself why you have never heard of this play. I did.

Playwright Hare has gained some recent attention, as his screenplay adaptation his play The Reader, won a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Oscar. (It lost, like most everything else, to Slumdog Millionaire.) However, film producers like a sure thing, and I bet that we will see a film adaptation of The Secret Rapture, soon.

The story of begins with the death of sisters Isobel and Marion's father. We see Isobel (Rachael Warren) sitting alone in the dark, her father's lifeless body in a bed, a few feet away. The door to the bedroom opens and the long, tall shadow of her older sister, Marion (Phyllis Kay) appears. Marion, a minister in the British Conservative Party, rushes in, anguished that she has missed her father's last moments. She is also upset (as upset?) to think that their boozy stepmother Katherine (Anne Scurria) has gotten her hands on an expensive ring she gave her father a few months ago. The giving of the expensive ring was a last, extravagant gesture from an absent daughter to her bedridden father. Marion believes (or has convinced herself) that Katherine is likely to pawn the ring for a case of cheap vodka.

Isobel, who nursed her dying father for months, is loathe to let him go, and as such, impulsively agrees to give her stepmother a job in her tiny, three-person, commercial art studio. Denial cloaked in loyalty. Her long-time boyfriend Irwin (Stephen Thorne) is also her employee.

Marion and her born-again husband Tom, are eager to lend a hand (if there is a buck to be made) and offer to invest in Isobel's firm, giving her the capital to expand and comfortably employ their stepmother. Unbeknown to Isobel, they have offered to double Irwin's salary if Isobel sells them controlling interest in the firm. At Irwin's urging, and against her own best instincts, Isobel deepens the family/business relationship an agrees to sell the business. When she learns of Marion and Tom's offer to Irwin, the betrayal is unforgivable. Irwin spends most of Act Two trying to win back Marion's affection. The play's ending takes a sharp, not entirely plausible, turn. The staging, however, is done brilliantly.

Rachel Warren's Isobel is a chameleon, supported well by Ron Cesario's costume design. Small changes to hair, costume and deportment often tell the audience more about Isobel than her dialogue. In the Dowling Theater, Warren is able to keep the acting small yet effective. Her interactions with Stephen Thorne are as easy and breezy at the outset as they are frigid and frightening as the play reaches it climax. Thorne's Irwin is open, affable and a bit naïve. His descent into guilt-ridden madness is acted with more subtlety than the dialogue suggests.

Phyllis Kay delivers Marion's dialogue with the authority required of a politician. Every utterance is an edict. You aren't supposed to like Marion, but in Kay's hands, you want to see more of her.

Anne Scurria is universally accessible as mostly kind-hearted Katherine. Everyone, in their extended family has heard stories about someone like Katherine. As she explains why, in a drunken rage, she stabbed a pompous, arrogant businessman, you think, "Well, he deserved it."

FrEd Sullivan, Jr. has set aside much of what makes him recognizable to Trinity audiences. His Tom is understated, to the point of checking for a pulse. Sullivan shows a tremendous restraint, letting the female cast members, correctly, do the heavy lifting.

Trinity veterans are joined in this production by Patricia Lynn, who is a third-year MFA student at the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. Lynn does a terrific job in the small role of Rhonda, the political climber who is not above using all of her wiles (feminine or otherwise) to get what she wants.

The set design, by James Schuette is as expansive as it is modular. Schuette has created large areas in the Dowling's intimate setting. I thought the deceased's love of books should be represented physically. It wasn't. A small point in a divine design.

Deb Sullivan's lighting design, rightly, fades into the background after Marion's dramatic entrance.

David Hare's writing is witty, with biting and infinitely quotable dialogue. At the reception, following the funeral Katherine correctly observes, "There is nothing people like more than expressing great friendship with people who can't deny it." Tom, in explaining his personal relationship with Jesus Christ, sees God's hand in the appearance of a box containing Ford Grenada spark plug wires. These are the very wires he needs to repair his own car. When asked if the same God that placed the wires in the box also made his car break down, Tom is befuddled.

Director Curt Columbus keeps the portrayal of these, mostly unlikable characters, multi-dimensional. The story, which is far from straight-forward, is presented with a precise clarity. Columbus constantly pulls his actors back from the expected. Theatrical stereotyping would make Isobel a saintly doormat and the conservative, driven, Marion a stone-cold bitch. Not here. While we understand Marion and Isobel think that their stepmother is a gold-digging alcoholic, the audience sees an aging, frightened, impetuous, widow who struggles with addiction and ennui. Columbus capitalizes on Hare's terrific dialogue and Trinity's talented cast to make a completely enjoyable evening at the theater.

The Secret Rapture runs through March 29th at Trinity Rep's Dowling Theater, which is located at 201 Washington St., Providence, RI. Tickets start at $20 and can be purchased through the Trinity Rep Box office at 401-351-4242 or online at www.trinityrep.com

Photo: Rachael Warren and Stephen Thorne in The Secret Rapture, directed by Curt Columbus.

Photo Credit: Mark Turek