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Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

nytheatre.com review by Hieu Tran
August 15, 2005

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, a new play written and directed by Adam Klasfeld, begins with a writer named Rosh, sitting by a wall on the stage, addressing us thus:Dear audience, you do not know your history or art if you do not realize that a wall is a thing of beauty. An English bard once told a tale of two long lovers held apart by a tattered wall, such an old thing, that every day one spied through its narrow cracks to gaze at the other.Moments later an Elf knocks over a stone from the wall, and Rosh gets shot in the arm by some unseen person from the other side.In the next scene, Rosh’s wife Faye is complaining to her friend Ah-Mee that her husband has been acting strangely for the past six days, staying outside all day—sleeping outside even—declaring that he is guarding their home against... what exactly? He doesn’t say, and she has no idea herself. She also can’t tell that Rosh’s right arm is missing, even though he says it is (and even though the audience can clearly see that it is), so she calls in a Doctor to examine him for what she believes is a mental condition. The Doctor, a family friend, can’t perceive the missing arm either. So... what are we supposed to make of all this?Well, Good Fences appears to be an allegory, and the wall, the shooting, and the arm that may or may not be missing are all metaphors. The wall symbolizes the cultural, religious, and psychological barriers between all the countries and factions in the Middle East; the shooting is just another example of the many acts of violence that take place there every day between these factions; and the missing/not missing arm—well, here is what Klasfeld has to say about that (quoted from the show's website):From the audience’s perspective, Rosh’s arm appears to be missing, so we’re challenged to question our own beliefs about the nature of reality: What is Truth? What is madness? Are these concepts determined by popular consensus, or something else?Does the play really do enough to compel us to question the nature of reality, viz., the nature of shifting, competing realities and narratives that I’m sure contribute to, and often result from, the extreme animosity between these long-standing, contentious groups? Not really. The problem is, though Klasfeld’s attempt to distill the Middle Eastern quagmire works on an intellectual level—i.e., we understand what he’s trying to get at—its dramatic potency is diluted by a psychologically simplified and sanitized treatment of the subject. Though guns get fired two more times in the play, the allegorical nature of the piece fails to throw us into the true ugliness of the situation. Without that, the play seems to be more of an intellectual exercise than a profound piece of drama.The acting, also, is unfortunately uneven. Though Donna Abraham (Faye), Nick Choksi (Elf), and Michael DeNola (Doctor) do fine work in their respective roles, I found Roy Edroso’s portrayal of Rosh as a man intent on protecting his wall and home against an unknown enemy strangely flat. His outbursts of anger—of which there are a few—seem, quite frankly, not that believable, as they come across more like affectations than actual rage. Michelle A. Dingoor could’ve also given her character a little more nuance to pull off some of the lighter moments in the play.