Libe Barer (left) plays Corina, a Guatemalan immigrant held hostage until she pays by her “coyote” Efron (Juan Ramirez Jr.) in The Audit, one of two one-acts presented by Urban Stages. Ramirez also wrote the one-act.
One-act plays are rarely staged in New York—with the exception of a recent Irish Rep bill of Beckett shorts—so Urban Stages deserves credit for undertaking two new ones, each about 50 minutes long. The plays are the result of a competition for one-acts with two characters, under the umbrella title Dynamic Duos; the two winners were chosen from about 300 submissions.
In Lynda Crawford’s The Audit Joel Ripka plays Sam, an aging hippie and musician who is trying to claim his apartment as a home-office deduction because he composes music in it. The audit is being conducted by Edie (Disnie Sebastien); Sam tries to charm her into agreeing with him, because he needs the savings to pay for his cat Buddy’s surgery.
Disnie Sebastien (left) is Edie, a tax auditor trying to make sense of her life, and Joel Ripka is Sam, a down-on-his-luck musician who cannot find inspiration and needs money for his cat.
What follows is a clash of personalities between the disorganized Sam and the business-minded Edie. Ripka portrays the air-headed musician with tons of charisma and heart and gets to sing. Sebastien does well, too, but struggles to match Ripka in more intense moments, where her character is supposed to feel threatened. “Do you intend to kill me?” she asks him.
Most of the piece is a moral debate between the two, particularly about the military. Edie is a veteran, and Sam, who lost his brother in Vietnam and protested the war, is her polar opposite. Those experiences of war provide a shared trauma that helps them connect and find common ground on the messiness of it all and how life isn’t so stable.
“Life isn’t fair” is Edie’s conclusion, as her character reveals more depth connected to potential post-traumatic stress disorder and definite trauma, but those aspects don’t come through strongly enough in her portrayal. “Is it fair my kid’s afraid of me?” she asks.
Directed by Leigh Setling, Crawford’s solid script works well and avoids a lot of clichés. Apart from a potential kiss that seemed awkward and unnecessary, the play is heartfelt—although Sam and Edie never seem to quite get to work on that audit.
“The plays are the result of a competition for one-acts with two characters.”
For the second play, Juan Ramirez Jr.’s The American Dream, the set is nearly bare—on a table sits a little TV, and a piece of cardboard lies on the stage. Corina (Libe Barer), a 23-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, is brought into the room by Efren (Ramirez, acting in his own work), a coyote whose job is to help her cross the border to the United States. However, she is $3,000 short, so he holds her hostage and tell her she has 40 minutes for her husband to wire the rest of the money—or else.
Ramirez helps the audience understand that the two characters speak to each other in Spanish throughout the piece, which witty and well-written. The two actors share strong chemistry and elevate a solid script. The intensity in this battle of wills, reminiscent of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, never lets up, as both characters unravel under the time deadline.
Soccer starts to bridge the gap as Corina fixes Efren’s portable TV. Efren keeps hitting it so he can listen to a match that is periodically interrupted by news reports of the unspecified time’s current election and its primary issue that seems always topical: immigration.
Ramirez and Barer share a strong chemistry onstage and elevate a solid script
The two start to open up more, but Efren still won’t let her call her husband, as the call could tip the authorities and get him arrested. But because both are Guatemalan, they start to bond: “Always bet on us,” Efren jokes, mocking what should connect them.
Corinna starts to share her hopes and dreams in an attempt to appeal to Efren’s humanity as the deadline nears. The stakes stay high as her words apparently do not reach him. “No one has rights,” he tells her. Both actors do a good job of portraying this escalation and the journey these characters undergo.
The American Dream devolves into a moral debate of hope versus nihilism as more revelations occur. Will she convince him as they debate what the American dream is, what a dollar can buy, and whether the dream is stronger than reality? “Looks like we are both in debt, that makes us American,” he jokes, as the two apparently warm up to each other.
In the end, while the play doesn’t make a decision on who is right, it does reach a satisfying conclusion. Although not perfect, both plays are well-written and -performed and make Dynamic Duos a solid evening at the theater.
Urban Stages’ productions of The Audit and The American Dream run to March 16 at Urban Stages (259 W. 30th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; matinees are at 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. For tickets and more information, visit urbanstages.org.
