Life is short, goes the saying. You'll never know how short it is until you witness the breathtaking pace of An Infinite Ache, now showing at the Next Act Theatrer. How fast, you ask? This mating dance goes from awkward first date to comfortable old age in the span of 90 minutes. The two-character play involves two ordinary people living an ordinary life in Los Angeles.
Charles (Nathan Sorseth) is a nebbishy Jewish historian who makes a living by working in a coffee shop. Hope (Mary Ann de la Cruz) is an Asian wannabe actress who eventually becomes a therapist. The entire play takes place in his tiny bedroom (although this eventually morphs into the master bedroom in their home).
The most curious thing about this play is that the characters aren't presented sympathetically. The playwright almost dares us to like them. All the scenes of their lives, chopped up in bits and pieces and scattered like so much confetti throughout the script, rarely present them in their best light. Everything about them is so ambivalent. For instance: the first date is a disaster, but they still continue to see each other. Then, when Charles proposes sometime later, Hope responds with a definite "no." Later she sits on the bed, alone, and puts the ring on her finger. Supposedly, this is the signal they did eventually marry. Even their divorce doesn't have any fireworks. It's just a matter-of-fact decision, summated in four or five lines of dialogue.
The play has plenty of moments like this, where the audience is often left scratching its head. We're not exactly sure where one conversation leaves off and another begins. The timeframe is so blurred that it takes awhile for the audience to catch on. As the play picks up momentum, the uneven timeframe becomes easier to understand.
One of the finest "scenes" in the play, which lasts all of 20 seconds, involves the family pet. From "let's get a dog" to "too bad we had to get rid of the dog" is played out in such hilarious, staccato symmetry that it earns (and receives) a big laugh from the audience. Other scenes, supposedly more poignant, don't have a similar ring of truth. When the couple's infant is hospitalized following a freak accident, the wife spends more time chewing out her husband over not being able to reach him by phone than she does scooping up a few things from the apartment and rushing back to the hospital. That's what one would expect from a hysterical mother, right?
There are so many similar holes in David Schulner's script that even a talented director such as David Cecsarini can't patch them all. Worse, the two actors don't seem to have any chemistry. They never seem to ignite (except during torrid bouts of sex during their first few meetings). When a frustrated Hope proclaims, "I feel like I'm living with my brother!" it seems a fair statement. There also doesn't seem to be any magical "glue" that holds them together through the years, except perhaps inertia. This is not to say that Nathan Sorseth and Mary Ann de la Cruz don't perform their roles with polish and professionalism. They are more than adequate for their roles. One just wishes they had a better script to work with.
