4 commentsDallas — You can’t go back. Back there, back then, to the way things were. It’s time’s hard lesson. For some, however, the past’s silence is solace. Deeds done in the dark remain hidden. In Naomi Izuka’s world the hidden can haunt all the same.
Though Language of Angels begins in a Carolina cave, it delves even deeper through thick layers of longing and regret. Theatre Too’s low-ceilinged space provides a ready atmosphere for a play that uses the caves as setting and symbol. Director Jeffrey Schmidt’s production for Theatre Three is full of these opportunities taken in a play about opportunities lost.
For starters, Schmidt designs his own set with soft black cloth swaged to seem hard. The craggy, baggy walls and blocky rocks hide nooks and night-lights that allow for hiding and finding. Paul Arnold’s lights reveal and conceal in unexpected ways. These designers don’t seem bound by this basement space.
The evening begins with Seth (Montgomery Sutton) telling us about the caves while lit by a single match. This subterranean soliloquy provides an intimate introduction and sets up a rhythm of elevated language delivered in low accents. These’s ghost stories, y’all. Except the speakers turn out to have died one by one after the fateful night that binds the nine of them together. It’s more complicated than “the lady of White Rock Lake” and all the creepier for it.
Basically, some friends were partying in the caves that go on forever. They lose track of one of the group, Celie (Jessica Renee Russell). They never find her or her body. Each is haunted by the loss in a different way. As the play progresses the cave’s complexities mirror life in the way that they are exciting, foreboding and unforgiving.
The characters are a recognizable collection of small town archetypes. Schmidt manages somehow to keep the familiarity of their struggles from becoming too predictable, though. Ryan Martin plays Michael, the dreamer and Clayton Wheeler plays Billy, the aggressive one. In a cliff-hanging scene, girlfriend Danielle (Aleisha Force) tries to hold onto her man, Michael, despite Billy’s bullying. The staging of this is simple but sold completely by Martin’s dangling and Force’s desperation. You can’t tell if Schmidt is coaxing these performances or capitalizing on these performers. The chill up your spine is all the same either way.
The evening is full of rich performances. The aforementioned Martin and Wheeler are thoughtful and committed, but most complete of the ensemble are Force as Danielle and Clay Yocum as JB, the friend who ends up sheriff. Their final scene takes place in her isolated trailer indicated only by the addition of shabby chairs. Though it is years later and miles away, it seems they haven’t left the cave.
Danielle is a recovering meth addict, convincingly indicated through Bruce Coleman’s costume adjustments and Force’s performance. JB’s become sheriff─like his daddy and his daddy’s daddy. His concern for Danielle can’t conceal his interest in what she knows about Celie’s disappearance years before. This play that began with stage-flooding text ends with a spare scene of prying and pauses. Force and Yocum make more out of its simplicity than some of those earlier monologues. The only quibble is that it makes you wonder why we had to go through the former to get to the latter.
The evening is an elegy for lives as bleak as the caves around them. Strangely, this story of the damaged and doomed leaves one feeling relieved. It’s like the Twilight Zone: The tingling in your toes makes you slightly wiser and way more wary. 
