Portland Theater: Fool For Love at Coho | October 16 – November 17
October 16, 2009 — PDXPIPELINEPosted by Sasha Burchuck
A lover's quarrel in a lonely rented room, presided over by a ghost. Sam Shepard had an inclination towards approaching this scene over and over again. He had a flair for writing dialogue that was so piercing that it could make audiences cringe, recoil, delight in the vicarious satisfaction of having delivered a really good zinger. His work is deeply personal and self-referential. He blends Jung and the Beats with picaresque.
In Fool for Love, Eddy comes back to find May in a motel on the edge of the Mojave desert, thinking he'll woo her back to his trailer in Wyoming, although they've been separated for an interminable length of time. But May won't go without fighting him — for having left her so many times — and herself, for even though she loves him as much as she hates him, he rules her heart and she must follow. As they struggle towards no imaginable end, the ghost of the Old Man sits in a rocker behind them, like a one man Greek chorus, drinking whiskey and providing some insight in to why the two might be perpetuators of an ancestral paradigm of destruction.
Coho's production of Fool for Love is burning and intense — Chris Harder (Eddy) and Val Landrum (May), married in real life — bring a radiant chemistry to the set. Their performance is absolutely absorbing, something that really counts in a play where each audience member acts as voyeur.
October 16-November 17 at the Coho Theater Thurs, Fri & Sat 8:00 PM; Sun 2:00 PM
Adults $25; Students, Seniors, Groups $20
CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., Portland, OR 97210
Tickets: 503-205-0715 or www.cohoproductions.org
