“Danny and the Deep Blue Sea”

JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY is perhaps best known as the Oscar-winning writer of his original screenplay for “Moonstruck,” the 1987 film with Cher and Nicolas Cage. Many theatre-goers appreciated his Tony- and Drama-Desk-award-winning play, “Doubt,” for which he also won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Mr. Shanley also has an Emmy nomination to his credit, for adapting, with Richard Chapman, Robert Wiener’s book about the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Live from Baghdad, into the screenplay for a 2002 film for HBO. Including that teleplay, he has something like ten screenplays under his belt and more than twenty plays. One of the earliest of his theatre pieces was his darkly comic two-character romance from 1983, “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea—An Apache Dance.” Director Kate Erin Gibson selected “Danny” for the inaugural production of her new Red Door Theatre Company—a four-performance run at the Payan Theatre on the fifth floor at 300 West 43rd Street in Manhattan (just about block away from the center of the known universe). We caught the final performance last evening (21 October).

Danny is 29 and Roberta is 31—scarcely old enough to have become so hardened by life’s buffeting—when they meet one night in a bar in the Bronx and go into their savage (native American?) choreography. Danny has physical bruises and abrasions to accompany his psychological sores; he has just been in another fist fight, and so it’s hardly a surprise that his nickname is “The Beast.” Roberta is a single mother who lives with her thirteen-year-old son and her parents. She is vociferously ashamed of her dirty secret, but she confesses it to Danny anyway, and insists that he admit his repulsion. In fact, he claims that he can overlook it, and at length the two misfits leave the bar and complete their assignation in Roberta’s bedroom. Mr. Shanley dedicated the play “to everyone in the Bronx who punched me or kissed me, and to everyone whom I punched or kissed.” This dedication is odd but revelatory, offering a key to the two characters, who seem not to know the difference between a physical gesture of affection or a body blow. So hungry are they both for a human connection that it hardly matters to them what form it takes—tough and tender alike are fine as long as it’s not tepid. Danny and Roberta crave passion. The author has described his creations as “violent and battered, inarticulate and yearning to speak, dangerous and vulnerable.” Their extended bedroom sequence leads to a serious if surprising consideration of marriage—anticipating the famous scene in “Moonstruck” when Loretta (Cher) reacts to Ronny’s confession of love by slapping him (Nicolas Cage) twice and demanding that he “Snap out of it!”

As Danny, Aaron William Oetting earns our empathy with his puppyish eagerness to please but, despite his studied irascibility, he is less successful at developing the character’s beastliness. Chrysten Peddie, who confesses in her playbill biographical sketch that she comes from a background in musical theatre, is by turns plaintive, combative, and comic in the challenging dramatic role of Roberta. Ms. Gibson’s direction was tentative in the opening sequence in the barroom, where some of the blocking seemed forced and lacking in character-driven motivation, but she finds her footing in the bedroom, even though the bed is just a futon. This was clearly a shoestring production, but it was a worthy effort on the part of everyone involved, including assistant director Richard Wallace, stage manager Kyleen Milton, lighting designer Jennifer Wilcox, costume designer Terry Ruby, scenic designer Chris Schaffer, fight coordinator Josh Dodrill, and assistant stage manager Elizabeth Gibson. Their talents—and courage—earned our hearty congratulations.

We felt that the only real problem with the production was with the play itself, even if it apparently has been a popular subject for revival, including the 2004 production of the Second Stage Theater, just across 43rd Street. We could set aside the question of liking the two characters, but however much we wanted to root for them, and despite our fondness for ironic dichotomy, we just couldn’t quite find them credible. Nevertheless, we’ll be following this first season of the Red Door with the enthusiasm of genuine fandom, and we hope to be able to provide you with periodic updates.

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