We’re probably not the only country where aging is seen as an ominous specter, something to be dreaded and even feared because of its proximity to consummate demise. Such perceptions may not be naïve, but they certainly are narrow and overlook our capacity to experience life’s fullness and wonder throughout all of its stages. Playwright and actor Aurora Real de Asua learned that early as a teenager during summer visits with her grandmother in Spain. As a country whose citizens enjoy some of the longest life expectancies on earth, aging isn’t associated so resolutely with the grimness of decline.
WIPEOUT, Real de Asua’s exceptional homage to a dauntless grandmother at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, not only introduces us to three women cut from similar cloth, but places them in a context that both testifies to their thirst for living and to the playwright’s love of the ocean.
Real de Asua’s grandmother taught her women over the age of 70 can be “uniquely ferocious and hungry to live life without regret or apology”. Women who don’t stifle their curiosity or limit their horizons based on the number of candles on their birthday cake and prove that fierceness and daring can apply to pensioners just as well as they can to anyone else.
Straddling surfboards just off a beach in Santa Cruz, Claudia (Celeste Williams) and her friend Wynn (Meg Thalken) are more than a little impatient waiting for their surfing instructor to show up. Their conversation sounds more like sparring. Wynn’s testy and sharp. Claudia may be anxious about the time, but she’s not really ruffled by Wynn’s ill-temper. Now comfortably nestled into their seventh decade, they’ve been friends since kindergarten and aren’t easily thrown off track by what each other says. Fond of “I” statements and a devotee to the wisdom of the Zodiac, you can tell Claudia’s a lover of balance and order. Williams is so winning in the part, you’re soon consumed by the genuineness of her performance. The strength of her appeal contrasts with the confusion about her friend’s willful unpleasantness. Wynn’s worried about how the sun might affect her Botox and doesn’t seem to want to have a good time. When Gary (Cindy Gold) shows up, she nearly loses it. Claudia didn’t tell her that Gary would be joining them on this outing. With a personality the size of Texas, Gary is all about the experience and is thrilled to be in the ocean to do something she’s always craved, surfing. The third member of a three-girl posse that began as 5-year-olds, Gary’s entrenched and loaded with stories and escapades that would make Lenny Bruce proud.
Up to this point, the play had already been an exemplary example of beautifully rendered dialogue distinguished for its unvarnished honesty. That candor and authenticity about how women talk to one another kept smiles on faces in every seat in the theater. Waves of knowing chuckles and bursts of laughter that sprang from some deep visceral place were just as plentiful. By sharing stories like the episode she experienced on Highway 1, Gary moved the vitality of their exchanges into fourth gear. If we’re lucky, we may know a woman like Wynn or Claudia or Gary. It’s doubtful though that we know many which makes the three women depicted here such a joy.
Like fire, there’s something hypnotic about vast expanses of water. The playwright confesses she can’t explain why getting thrown around in gigantic ocean waves is so transforming, uplifting and affirming. But millions understand the seminal pull and attraction she’s talking about. Even as septuagenarians Wynn, Claudia and Gary understand it too and are in the midst of indulging their fantasy. It’s Blaze’s (Glenn Obrero) job, as a 19-year-old surfing instructor, to help make those dreams come true.
Of course he’s not aware of the trio’s dynamics. Nor did he witness the ominous sign of trouble earlier when Gary started to repeat a story she’d already told. More solicitous than he is perfunctory, Blaze has his hands full with these three. Gary’s overzealous, Wynn’s prickly and although Claudia’s willing; she’s exuding just a little too much trepidation. Blaze needs to win them all over and has just the right temperament and skill to pull it off. The veracity we find in the three women also shines in him. There’s a surface side and a deeper private side that affect how all four of them deal and respond to one another. Because of the way they’re being protected, you could even call those private concerns secrets. WIPEOUT magnificently shows they’re simply a part of life, regardless of where you stand on its spectrum. When age dulls or erases the beauty of youth, looses havoc on health or places the responsibility of caregiving on too young or unready shoulders; there are still places where exhilaration and discovery can be found. From this vantage point, on a surfboard offshore in the Pacific looks like one of the best you’re likely to uncover. All you need is the spirit to seek it out.
Thanks to the rampant wealth of talent filling Chicago, stellar performances like WIPEOUT are possible. Gold, Thalken, Williams and Obrero are all splendid. Because their roles probed deeper into the heart, Williams and Obrero are especially memorable and enthralling. Tara Mallen’s direction has all the markings of great expertise and impeccable creative intuition. Working in enviable harmony, Andres Fiz’s projection and Victoria Deiorio’s sound design bring the beauty and grandeur of the largest ocean on the planet into a small playhouse on Ridge Avenue. A playhouse that’s been proudly “advancing the lives of women through theater” for three decades.
WIPEOUT
Through April 6th
Rivendell Theatre Ensemble
5779 N. Ridge Avenue
Chicago, IL
