FringeNYC 2013: Confessions of Poverty

Review by Josh Sherman · August 13, 2013

I am truly baffled as to what an audience member is supposed to conclude, emote or draw from after experiencing a performance of the terribly misnamed Confessions of Poverty, now running at FringeNYC at Teatro SEA.  Writer-director Om Rupani has created a story that ostensibly interwines the love lives of four individuals and how their choices impact upon each other – and yet the actual dialogue provides all the punch of a watered down iced tea.

There are little stakes that drive the action forward, and the direction follows suit so that the actors are forced to revert to reciting lines back and forth in a two-dimensional, nondramatic confessional manner.  So at least the word ‘confessions’ is used correctly from the title – but every character in the show is an urban professional who does not need food stamps or seem concerned with money in the slightest.  The only poverty anyone will encounter is in the emotionally bankrupt characters that Rupani has created – unless you count the money you have spent on a ticket.

The cookie-cutter soap opera plot: Claire (Sara Percival) and Ben (Joshua Dye) are divorced.  They are lawyers (not broke), and Claire is a stereotyped type-A woman who parries verbally with her bland ex-partner.  They meet in expensive hotel rooms (not broke) to argue and then not have sex - which isn’t interesting because the arguments are dull and the aforementioned lack of sex.  Ben’s dating a younger, feisty artist (possibly broke) named Maya (Wynoami Glasser) who is peppy but prone to quoting other poets and playwrights, further widening the gap between the quality of the dialogue of actual show.  The fourth participant is the acidic academic (not broke) lover of Claire, David (Ross Pivec), who at least seems like a match for his faux tart-tongued partner, but we can see the trouble coming a mile away for the two doomed new ex-lovers.

The most interesting character is Ben’s mother (probably originally broke as an immigrant), who is not seen and only spoken of by Ben and Claire throughout the course of the play.  I say she’s the most interesting because her life and untimely demise at intermission – ‘confessed’ by Ben – changes his shallow life course which leads him back into Claire’s arms/bed at the start of Act Two. The only shining moment of the play (other than Claire’s wardrobe changes to take advantage of Percival’s stunning sex appeal) occurs when Maya and David get to give monologues of loves lost and damaged emotions.  There is where the audience gets a glimpse of what Rupani must have been aiming at when putting pen to paper originally.  A final twist occurs at the very end of the piece which only proves that Rupani could only give one character other than Ben’s mom an actual arc to play – leaving the other three performers to grab at whatever’s around emotionally to keep the show moving.

As with any dramatic piece, the audience needs to empathize with the protagonist and take the journey alongside them to feel a fulfillment (or tragedy, whatever the case may be).  I found it incredibly challenging to feel anything resembling sympathy for anyone except for poor, mute, offstage Ben’s dying mother.  I’ll confess that much.