Beckoning the audience to a tale told by firelight, Rorschach Theatre’s well-lit production of Jenny Connell Davis’ Dragon Play sets out to stir tense domestic drama with a corresponding fable about a flying, fire-breathing beast. But the play’s mixture of disparate elements doesn’t truly ignite.
Staged in-the-round by company co-artistic director Randy Baker, inside Rorschach’s lofty concrete space at the Stacks, Dragon Play generally feels like two plays running in tandem.
In a middle-class home — evoked through a humdrum open kitchen set by Sarah Beth Hall — a married couple, Woman (Erin Denman) and Man (Erik Harrison), approach a breaking point in their quarrelsome relationship. As she confesses, she’s too hung up on her former lover, the Dragon (Jalen Wilson-Nelem), who’s come back to her looking like “sex dipped in Sumatran chocolate.”
That’s a great line, yet probably as sexy as their story gets, despite tasteful love scenes saturated in color, courtesy of Hailey LaRoe’s striking lighting design.
When the Woman isn’t narrating her longing for the Dragon, in the patter of a film noir character, she’s often locking horns with her Man. Denman and Harrison have that part down, convincingly sparring like a longtime married couple. Though, as the couple’s course hits several curves, certain sharp shifts in their rapport are not as convincing.
The Woman’s romance with the Dragon reads more credibly. Wilson-Nelem brings intriguing heat, and danger, as the ex-lover who still has a hold on the Woman’s heart, and poses a compelling contrast to her Man. If their marriage should survive, someone will need to slay this Dragon.
In the play’s alternate tale, interweaved with the Woman and Man’s drama, an intrepid young hero, Loser Boy (Ben Ribler), embarks on a quest to slay a different dragon, or Dragon Girl (Bri Houtman), that’s landed in his rural town.
The town is merely suggested, with Dragon Girl perching on surfaces around the kitchen set. The presentation doesn’t lend to her seeming too formidable a foe for any dragonslayer.
Although, in this case, to slay might actually mean to conquer Dragon Girl by winning her heart through charm or seduction, or persistence. Ribler’s Loser Boy evinces the proper appeal, but Houtman’s Dragon Girl registers as haughty and unreceptive, draining the wit from her litany of trusty dragon adages like, “Humans only see what they understand,” and “Dragons don’t believe in parents.”
Dragons don’t get lost, she explains of her appearance in his town. She’s just on a layover. Dragons here clearly have their own way of being, and seeing the world, which isn’t embodied in Houtman’s performance.
In time, Dragon Girl will fly Loser Boy high into the air on shiny pink wings, but their leaden love story gets little lift. And the playwright’s premise of taking a metaphor for slaying personal dragons, and spinning that into a straightforward fantasy of subduing a real dragon, yields only so-so returns.
The Woman, Man, and Dragon’s tale takes precedence by default, with their final act offering the play’s most compelling developments, if, again, not entirely the most credible. Still, if any of the characters’ choices, particularly those made by the Woman, leave us confounded or unconvinced, the play does account for those mysteries of life. “Dragons don’t need happiness. Humans do.”
Dragon Play (★★☆☆☆) runs through May 17 at The Stacks, 101 V St. SW. Tickets are $20 to $50, with discounts for Students and Seniors. Call 202-399-7993, or visit rorschachtheatre.com.
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