Playwright Naomi Wallace's laudable intention to throw light upon the long-standing environmental degradation and human suffering caused by chemical industries in Louisville's Rubbertown neighborhood inspired. The Hard Weather Boating Party. This fourth play in the 33rd annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville falls far short, alas, of its noble goal.
Wallace sets her play, directed by Jo Bonney, in a cheap motel room where Staddon Vance (Michael Cullen), a plant submanager who has been exposed often to the lethal chemicals, recruits two other contaminated workers (they live in the polluted neighborhood) to join his plot to rob and kill the factory owner in his home.
Lex Nadal (Jesse J. Perez), a Latino, and Coyle Forester (Kevin Jackson), a black man, are surprisingly easy marks for the world weary Vance's plan. The men, who did not know each other, spend the first act trying to build trust in each other to carry out the very real but also symbolic murder.
They do this by playing a ludicrous game of Truth or Dare and trading boasts about their sexual exploits. It's a wonder they don't burst into a chorus of "Getting to Know You." Plus, all this banter lessens the impact of Wallace's message, which gets sharper treatment in the second act after the (somewhat) bloody deed has been done.
Vance couldn't kill the owner; he merely shot him in the leg. And there was no money to be found in the house after Coyle tied up the man and Lex punched him around. Their inept execution of their plan perhaps mirrors the inept public and governmental response to combating industry's death-making practices.
Vance begs the other two to kill him in a melodramatic climax that has a crack in the floor opening wider to let a glowing boat emerge from an Ohio River transformed into the River Styx.
Boating Party is a disappointment from playwright Wallace, whose earlier works including One Flea Spare and The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek have won international acclaim.
