Word: farnsworth
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This was the case at the Adams Pool last weekend, where writer, director and star Neil Farnsworth '98 staged his play "Rust." Many in the audience commented that they could remember reading the play in draft form over two years ago, and there's no question that Farnsworth mush have moved heaven and earth--or at least the OFA--to get his work from the page to the stage. But the play itself had no more to recommend it than most freshman efforts; and the cast, for whatever reason, didn't add much to its appeal...
...plot of "Rust" is a blend of familiar elements, invoking by turns Albee, Williams and others. Brad (played by Farnsworth, disguised unsubtly on the program as "Ichabod Crane"), a schlumpy former grad student, is stuck in his childhood home in New Orleans because his selfish siblings refuse to help him take care of their ailing mother. Scott (Jason Chaffin), the older brother, is a smug, cold yuppie; Jane (Sarah Yellen), the sister, is a cruel harpy masquerading as a p.c. environmentalist. Poor old Mom, played by the usually effervescent Shar von Boskirk, has nothing to do but sit center-stage...
...Brad himself, he's a quivering mess, shrill and childish, but so oppressed that he's meant to be sympathetic. It's hard to tell how much of this affect is in the character, and how much in Farnsworth's performance; suffice it to say that the first reference to Brad as being out of graduate school comes across totally incongruous, since up to that point he has seemed to be about 16. Everyone is so unpleasant that the play becomes painful; it's like watching twougly five-year-olds kicking a puppy...
...neighbor Miss Nancy (Tegan Willever), and a few familiar jokes about shouting in libraries and Geraldo Rivera. In the end, after his escape collapses just as his siblings have predicted, Brad comes close to a moral moment of truth--should he kill his mother, for all their sakes?--and Farnsworth does a good job in this scene, alternately stricken and hopeful. But the tension of the moment is dissipated in a ghostly flashback, which takes us back to the months before the lost baby died, leading us to believe that it was this event that pushed Mamma over the edge...
Faculty and friends last night celebrated Heaney's accomplishments at a reception in Lamont Library's Farnsworth Poetry Room...