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The Silent Concerto

nytheatre.com review by Joe LaRue
August 15, 2005

Alejandro Morales’s The Silent Concerto is an incredibly ambitious play, which has received a lovely production expertly staged by Scott Ebersold."This is a play he begins again and again," says Naldo, the central character in a two-man, one-woman love triangle between tortured twenty-somethings in the mid '90s. Naldo is an aspiring playwright, desperately trying to write the perfect play, a play that will make his struggling actress / roommate / best friend, Mallory, a star. The trouble begins when Benny—who is gorgeous, flip, and mysterious enough to attract both of them—moves into their small apartment. It’s a setup that has the characters running in a circle: Mallory wants Naldo, who wants Benny, who wants... both of them? Neither?As the drama unfolds, we are treated to a series of highly inventive staging and story-telling techniques, jumping back and forth between fantasy and reality, the past and the present—jumps which are kept very clear through lighting, sound, and staging. The technical accomplishments are effective and admirable.The big standout here is Susan O’Connor as Mallory, who is always so nuanced and engaging—a razor sharp presence on stage. She infuses Mallory with an honest yearning for artistic greatness that, even when failing miserably, never once becomes whiny or self-pitying. Greg Marcel and Ivan Quintanilla have many nice moments, but their performances are not as finely drawn, and are overshadowed by O’Connor’s presence. I longed for the play to focus more on Mallory.The first two “movements,” as Morales calls them (rather than acts) are filled with witty repartee, imagination, and enough specificity to make us forget that we are watching another love triangle story. It’s only in the play’s final scenes that it loses momentum and focus. It seems as though every young writer has a "post-college angst" play collecting dust in a drawer somewhere. What’s refreshing about The Silent Concerto is that Morales has taken his out, brushed it off, and looked at it again with wiser eyes.