The Given

Those of you convinced that philandering husbands never leave the wife for the other woman may quickly decide you know where Francine Volpe’s new play,
The Given, at Studio Dante is heading — particularly since the hubby on view here is seeing a sex-club stripper. But Volpe has a few surprises up her magician’s sleeve, and dark theatrical fireworks will flare before she calls it quits.

That The Given keeps the jaw dropping isn’t completely unexpected; Volpe’s previous play Late Fragment, about the Twin Towers aftermath, also dallied with the macabre. Clearly, she isn’t interested in sweetness and light. One of the first things you should know about her latest undertaking is that she’s dealing with an issue we saw handled frequently from 1985 to 1995: AIDS. Over the last decade, however, playwrights have dismissed the subject so thoroughly that it’s almost shocking to see it considered again with such graphic concern.

Volpe’s protagonist is Cathea (Laura Heisler), an ostensibly smart woman in her mid-twenties who divides her time between the sleazy joint where she takes it off for tips and a low-rent apartment where her gay friends Leon (Anthony De Sando) and Swanee (Jason C. Brown) stop by with great frequency. Not at all incidental to the slightly complicated plot are the facts that Swanee, who’s pining over a sometime lover called Jimmy Carter, is HIV-positive, while Leon is HIV-negative but would like to be otherwise. Even more crucial to the narrative — and to Volpe’s title — is that Leon’s wish to convert to positive status is representative of a not-so-new development in the homosexual community whereby healthy men seek the “gift” of positive status from already immune-deficient men. These are the given and the givers.

Cathea, who often finds herself stepping between the combative Leon and Swanee, also has her work cut out for her in overseeing her wheelchair-ridden grandmother, Nettie (Elzbieta Czyzewska), and calming alcoholic fellow stripper Suzie Wild (Sharon Angela). Catering to the sexual and psychological needs of a regular called Seth (Remy Auberjonois) should be an additional burden for Cathea, but the more she gets to know this misunderstood-by-his-wife customer, the more she thinks there might actually be a future with him outside of their secluded cubicle. Her learning that the pairing isn’t so likely an outcome and how the revelation is connected to Leon’s somber escapades are the foundation for Volpe’s dramatic developments. They’re stunning, but they won’t be revealed here. Trust me that they’re the farthest thing from reassuring.

In a play that will remind longtime theatergoers of Shelagh Delany’s A Taste of Honey, Volpe refuses to flinch. Time and again, she follows Cathea from the workplace to her humble homestead and into increasing trouble. (The set, which requires frequent changes, is by Studio Dante co-founder Victoria Imperioli; no credit, however, is given to the sound designer who has supplied the Top 40 hits used to cover the changes.)

Writing boldly, Volpe asks for — and gets — bold performances from a cast directed with mounting intensity by Michael Imperioli and Zetna Fuentes. Heisler earns sympathy as the increasingly less sympathizing Cathea; she’s asked to run a gamut of emotions, and she does so with an impressive kind of sordid elegance. Auberjonois, who just gets better and better, gives what might be his most nuanced performance to date as the justifying, eventually self-serving Seth. Angela plays hard-bitten Suzie Wild with the right light slovenly touch. Brown and De Sando do their individual gay things flawlessly, while Czyzewska refuses to sentimentalize the nasty Nettie.

In her determination to journey through some devilish lower-class situations, Volpe makes a few mistakes and asks for a few indulgences. Cathea, a woman who refers knowledgeably to Franz Kafka, seems above her calling. Her coming from an abusive Polish household goes some way toward explaining her predicament, but more is needed. She’s not married; she has no children. Is lap dancing the only outlet open to her? Further, in order to complicate matters for her characters, Volpe is a bit too offhand about the mechanics of AIDS transmission. Yet, even if not everything in The Given works, this is a play — and a theater company — to which attention must be paid.