Constructivists' "I'm Gonna Pray for You So Hard" is a Devastating Character Study
Photo by Testaduro Media, LLC
This spring Milwaukee theaters have been looking inward to find comedy, drama, and extreme dysfunction. In March, Skylight Music Theatre presented Noises Off – a meta-intense examination of the perils of regional touring productions, focusing on a group of overly dramatic actors rehearsing and performing a play. Now the Constructivists have opened I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard, by Halley Feiffer. It’s a meta-cubed two-hander focusing on a young actor (Rebekah Farr) and her famous playwright father (James Pickering) who are waiting anxiously for a review to be published of her performance in The Seagull, a Chekhov play about an author and his leading lady receiving bad reviews after performing a new play.
And for one more layer of meta-ness, the semi-autobiographical piece I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard was written by an actress and playwright who happens to have a famous playwright for a father.
And for a final, exhausting layer of meta-tasticness, there were several critics on hand in the audience on opening night, laughing uncomfortably during the first scene, where the characters curse the small minds, broken ambitions, and miserable, sick, petty lives of theater critics, whose opinions, they assert, are generally worthless.
Once you get past the hall of mirrors that frames the play, I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard is actually an intense character study that is, by turns, heart wrenching, gut punching and horrifying. In this case it is also a rare opportunity to see well-known (and well-loved) Milwaukee performer – Pickering – absolutely transform into a complicated, damaged curmudgeon with a caustic mean streak. The actor completely disappears into his role as David, an abrasive, monumentally unhappy, manipulative and abusive father with both a god complex and the mammoth insecurities one can only develop as an artist constantly in search of approval. To add to his charm, on this night David is trying to dull his emotional and psychological pain with any drug he can find. Over the course of one long conversation, he dives into cigarettes, bottles of wine, a bong full of weed, and a couple of lines of cocaine.
As difficult as it must have been to get inside the psyche of this toxic man, Pickering also has multiple vocal challenges in bringing the role to life, which he handles with incredible dexterity. His character, David, not only speaks with a gentle East Coast accent, he also has asthma and a stutter, which surfaces from time to time. Later in the play, he struggles to recover from a stroke that affects his ability to both speak and to walk. Pickering incorporates all of these physical and communication issues into his deft and organic portrayal. This devastating performance will awe even Pickering’s most ardent fans, displaying an emotional range that is surprising, even after watching him on stage for decades.
In the first scene of the play, David speaks the lion’s share of the lines. But as his insecure, fragile daughter Ella, Rebekah Farr has the equally impressive task of actively listening. She stays constantly engaged while responding with short exclamations, interrupting what is essentially an hour-long monologue. Farr is fascinating to watch as she struggles through the verbal onslaught – trying desperately to find the safe spaces as she is pulled through an emotional minefield. Ella’s wide open heart is as transparent as Farr’s face, which contorts with each tectonic shift in her father’s mood. It’s immediately apparent that Ella’s role as adoring audience member to David’s casually cruel, decidedly un-PC ranting is one she has inhabited for her whole life. It’s also clear that, like any child, Ella craves her father’s love and support. But for this entire evening she is trapped at the kitchen table with a man who is incapable of bestowing anything like it, unconditionally.
Director Jamielyn Gray ably choreographs the button-pushing in this contentious conversation, as intentions bounce from warm to threatening, then encouraging to insulting, soaked in desperation on both sides. Under her direction the anxiety and the stakes in the room start high and just keep getting higher. Gray also keeps the relatively static play visually arresting by putting the audience inside the kitchen where it’s occurring. Helped by Sarah Harris’s intimate, realistic set, the playing space is arranged as a strip down the middle of the theater, with a few rows of audience members seated on either side. Watching the father and daughter charging at each other and then retreating, dancing around the kitchen table and its plethora of drugs, jockeying for position and looking for a moment of weakness, the play unfolds like a boxing match, which is visually reinforced by seeing spectators on two sides.
The second scene of the play occurs several years after the first, when father and daughter are estranged. In every way, the tables have now turned. In the midst of Ella’s smashing success, performing an autobiographical, one-woman show that she also wrote, David returns hoping to apologize and reconcile.
As the new version of Ella – hyper focused, cutthroat, and demanding – Farr does a surprisingly sharp right turn from victim to victor, abused to abuser. Dressed in heels and a nicely cut blazer and slacks, she screams at her assistant on the phone and decides to make her fans wait for her at the post-show party, where she is both celebrated playwright and star.
As a frail and penitent David, Pickering is once again almost unrecognizable. Dressed in a dark suit and carrying a bunch of flowers as an olive branch, he hobbles toward his daughter, explaining his current medical state, his sobriety, and his remorse. His speech is labored. His eyes are watery and pleading. But his past haunts the reunion.
While the first act features speeches that go a mile a minute, the pace of this scene is glacial and includes an abundance of silences. While there’s no glee in recognizing that Ella has followed in her father’s footsteps – bullying others to get her way, depending on hard drugs to ease her pain, and putting her own needs above those of anyone else – there is a sense of narrative satisfaction, seeing the terrible habits of one generation inhabit the next generation so completely. How you interpret the duo’s final conversation depends a lot on whether you believe in redemptive forgiveness and whether you believe in ghosts. The painfully slow pacing of this scene extends the torture for all involved, but doesn’t ultimately make the play better – just longer. I caught myself looking at the clock frequently during the final 30 minutes and hoping the end was near.
On opening night, The Constructivists’ Artistic Director Jamielyn Gray seemed to apologize for the dark content of the play we were about to see. But as a consistent viewer of their work over the past several seasons, I think I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard fits in perfectly with the company’s previous offerings. It also fills a niche that is important, if frequently difficult to watch – telling the stories of what happens when people are pushed to their breaking points.
I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard is on stage at the Interchange Theater Co-op through April 29.