FringeNYC 2013: Like Poetry

Review by Martin Denton · August 10, 2013

At the core of Kristian O'Hare's new play Like Poetry, which is being presented by Ivy Theatre Company at FringeNYC, is a compelling and important story of a young gay man who has repressed his sexual identity with sorrowful and regretful results. When we first meet him, the protagonist Stagger is seeking help from an unorthodox (possibly just holistic?) therapist known simply as Doc; a blend of herbs and medicines and a journey though the poetry of Walt Whitman comprise the prescription that will help Stagger address and hopefully work through his crisis. Much of the play consists of flashbacks, where Stagger recalls moments from his youth, dealing with an overprotective Mom and a distant but macho Dad and the strange yearnings he seems to feel for his best friend Card.

All of the above is involving and, even if it's potentially familiar ground, it comes together in O'Hare's script as a story well worth telling. But I found myself being pulled away and emotionally distanced throughout this nearly two-hour, two-act play, by some of the devices and choices made by playwright O'Hare and director Audrey Alford. I wanted to really feel Stagger's pain, but ultimately I found I did not.

We are told right from the outset that, as children, Stagger and his pal Card are obsessed with bugs. The adult Stagger can still reel off the Latin names of insects he sees, and the boys excitedly talk to each other about the mating rituals and other characteristics of the praying mantis, various butterflies and moths, earthworms, and other creatures as if having memorized paragraphs from their textbooks. At various times in the play, actors appear on stage shrouded head-to-toe in brightly colored body suits that suggest these insects (and, for example, when they are playing fireflies they carry tiny flashlights that they turn on and off). This anthropomorphic realization of the bugs gives them the weight of symbolism; but I didn't connect with it except in the most general way.

Similarly, Walt Whitman himself appears in the play, knocking at Stagger's window while he sleeps like one of the ghosts in A Christmas Carol. Whitman takes Stagger to a men's sex club on more than one occasion, which is populated by guys dressed in the same bug costumes I just described. I didn't get that at all.

Alford's staging felt overly busy to me; Robert Crozier, the engaging young actor who plays Stagger, spends a lot of time stripping down to boxers and then putting his clothes back on, for example. I was also struck by the problematic casting of Matt Renskers as Card: in one scene, the 16-year-old Stagger and Card make a big fuss about how hairy Card's chest is, but Renskers' body hair is so light (either in color or volume or both) that from my seat in the front row I could detect very little, which made the scene seem weird.

Jim deProphetis is very likable as Stagger's friendly gay neighbor Trout, and Brian Murphy has some affecting moments as Stagger's father (though he seems to be about the same age as Crozier, which made their scenes together a trifle jarring).

When Like Poetry focuses on Stagger and his struggles with his past choices and his present anxieties, it comes close to packing an emotional punch. But, for me, too much of the rest of the show—including a possible relationship with Trout—serves only to pull us back from the central theme, diminishing the impact. There's clearly an interesting, talented playwriting voice here, and I'd certainly be interested to see whatever O'Hare might come up with in the future.