Theater Review by Stuart Miller . . . .
Listening to Mike Lemme’s talkback after the performance of his new show, Before the Drugs Kick In gave me an appreciation of what he was striving for in the play. He was forthright and passionate and filled with a nervous energy as he explained how cathartic writing this production was for him. The woman in this one-person show was based on Leme’s mother, who cut her wrists in front of him (and his brother) when he was nine. She was then institutionalized for years, and rendered invisible by everyone else in his family.
Unfortunately, the talkback also dramatically underscored what was missing from the play: the storytelling is circuitous at best and lacks the passion and energy to bring this story to life. The unfortunate events would be best told as a family drama but, of course, one-person shows are much more affordable to stage, especially for unknown playwrights. Still, he should have written a one-woman play for a middle-aged actress looking back with candor on that fateful evening and its consequences.
Instead, the play stars a much younger woman, Maria DeCotis, playing Lynn Walsh, a woman in a mental health institution who lives—in her imagination—as a 28-year-old stand-up comedian. The audience exists only in her mind (though bits about how some of us may be allowed to leave, while others not, only serve to further obfuscate matters).
This creates an emotional distance from the audience and allows a lack of true reflection from the character. There are some darkly funny and sardonic lines, like the riff, early on, when Walsh tells us, “Three months ago, I cut my wrists in front of my children,” but then realizes that might go over better with a punchline, experimenting with a few, like “Three months ago, I cut my wrists in front of my children . . . and they still wouldn’t do the dishes.”
Lemme is a stand-up comedian, but the jokes in the show aren’t generally sharp enough for an hour set; and when Walsh is not delivering those quips, she comes across as morose and medicated. There’s also a lack of internal logic—Walsh seems obsessed with Jerry Seinfeld’s history of dating younger women (she throws in an obligatory dig at Woody Allen, too) but not only is that segment lacking in wit, it’s unclear why a 62-year-old woman who was never a comic, and has been in an institution for two decades, would be so focused on this—or why she’d think her imaginary 28-year-old alter ego would care about Seinfeld.
Lemme’s mother was locked away for fifteen years and has since been in assisted living and he has an ongoing relationship with her; but, in the play Walsh is approaching a quarter-century under lock-and-key. But it’s never made clear why she is deemed such a threat to herself or others that she’d still be there, especially as treatments and attitudes toward mental health issues have changed so radically since the late 1990s. And she mentions many times (much of the play feels repetitive) that her sons have only visited her three times in all those years.
The result is a heavy and almost hopeless piece, a bleak outlook that feels at odds with both the reality and what Lemme seems to want to convey. In the end, we feel pity for Walsh, but more specifics about her circumstances may have allowed us to feel anger at a society that would do this to a woman and a better-written play would have made us feel empathy and compassion for her, both then and now. Lemme clearly has a powerful story to tell but he needs to strip away the artifice to really get us to hear it.
Before the Drugs Kick In. Through December 22 at Under St. Marks Theater (94 St. Marks Place, between First Avenue and Avenue A). 60 minutes, no intermission. www.frigid.nyc
Photos: Lynn T. Walsh
