Ensemble cast gets rolling in second half of ‘Blind Date’
by Chuck Graham on Oct. 16, 2008, under Calendar
Roberto Guajardo and Roxanne Harley star in “Blind Date,” which runs through Sunday.
Anyone who spends much time sitting around coffee shops has seen them. The single people, sitting alone, often a little older, looking off into space. Their faces far away, their eyes weary. Sometimes the hand around the coffee cup has a wedding ring. Sometimes not.
These are the empty ones whose thoughts are reflected by the characters in Argentine playwright Mario Diament’s ruminating “Blind Date.” The title is not a label but more of a play on words; the main character, played by Roberto Guajardo, is blind.
The character is modeled after the philosophical writer Jorge Luis Borges, who also became blind. The production is by the Borderlands Theater, with Barclay Goldsmith directing.
Diament uses the five characters in the play to ponder from different angles nothing less than the essence of life. Is everything that happens predestined? Or is choice the determining factor?
Are we living the lives we were meant to have? Or did a chance decision made back in high school suddenly determine that future success would be impossible and the ensuing heartbreak absolute?
Civilization has been evolving for thousands of years, but we still have no idea about the answer.
That hasn’t stopped Diament from pondering the question. Watching the Borderlands production would be a great way for friends to leap into their own discussions after the show.
Guajardo as the Blind Man opens the first act sitting on an all-white park bench. Wearing a dark suit and narrow tie, leaning on a cane, he looks like the ultimate professional. He is quickly joined by Rick Shipman, also in a dark suit, playing the Man. The sighted Man and the Blind Man begin a conversation that starts out simply but soon has them trying to estimate the odds of any two people in the world actually meeting each other.
Then the Blind Man recalls how in youth he caught the eye of a pretty Parisian girl but lacked the courage to actually introduce himself. Decades later, he hasn’t forgotten her. The Man has his own urgent problems, such as compulsively paying $20,000 for a painting he bought mostly because it was a nude study of a woman he admired.
The females also get their input. A young woman (Jessica Risco) talks about selling one of her boyfriend’s paintings for the outrageous sum of $20,000, but feeling justified because her boyfriend is dying of AIDS and needs the money for life-prolonging medicine. An older woman (Roxanne Harley) and a psychologist (Eva Tessler) also have tales of conflicts that slowly entwine with the others.
Gradually the need to believe we live in an ordered universe of predestination competes against the hope that personal courage will change bad luck into good luck. Surely human history isn’t shaped by both forces. Or is it?
Diament takes his time developing this conflict, which Goldsmith has chosen to present at a low-key and meticulous pace. Audience members who stick with the slow first half will get their payoff in the production’s second half as frustrations bubble over among the five people. The quintet of actors works as an ensemble, each backing the others, giving credibility to their explanations of coincidence.
Unlike most Borderlands productions, there is no political or multicultural message here. Though Diament’s play does remind us that when it comes to matters of the heart, people in South America and North America are exactly the same.
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‘Blind Date’
What: Borderlands Theater presents “Blind Date” by Mario Diament
When: 7:30 p.m., 2 p.m. Sunday matinee, to Oct. 19
Where: Zuzi’s Theatre, 738 N. Fifth Ave.
Price: $18.75 with discounts, $10.75 students
Info: 882-7406, borderlandstheater.org grade: A-
