WHEN BROTHERS KISS is the Cain and Abel story revised for the twenty-first century. Steve and Dave Alexander are brothers, and they are locked in a life and death struggle for their identities. At the same time they are trying to understand their repulsion and deep love for each other. Their mother Aria is Jewish by birth, but she is now a practicing Lutheran despite her family's long rabbinical lineage. Their father, Steve Sr., is black, an attorney, and an agnostic. The boys are allowed to select their own religion. Dave becomes Jewish and Steve becomes a Christian. Some kisses are sweet, others are bitter, and some are both... kisses become a metaphor for their myriad, often troubled, relationships with others. A childhood first kiss between best friends Steve and Joann swiftly leads to unintended consequences. This innocent first kiss pulls them apart, driving Joanne's Mormon mother to forbid her daughter from interacting with Steve. She moves first her children and then the entire family away. Yet Joann remains throughout their adult lives a flashpoint for the brothers' love and rivalry. Both brothers are creative and leave home and begin their separate odysseys; one is a struggling musician; the other a would-be filmmaker. Both brothers have near-death experiences: one loses his desire to live in the secular world; the other has the desire to live his life more intensely. Both brothers have gay experiences: for one it's traumatic, for the other it is nothing to think twice about. . Both brothers have lovers who become pregnant and have abortions. One brother says he can’t remember the girl’s name; the other is haunted to the point of neurosis by the child he’ll never know.
And in the background, there is always the inner conflict between their repulsion of each other's religious and life choices and their deep love for each other. How two brothers experience life and loss, and ultimately resolve the conflicts between them, is the story of “When Brothers Kiss”. This is the first book of a three book series. Now Available in paperback @Amazon Books. and an as e-book @Amazon Books. Last Harbor SCREENED AT THE 2010 BOSTON FILM FESTIVAL: I suspect that "The Last Harbor" will eventually show up on a cable channel rather than in theaters, and might be cheap and successful enough to get a follow-up or two. Mystery series have been built on less than "former big-city cop solves crimes in picturesque harbor town", but it works best with a more interesting sleuth than Ian Martin. Ian (Wade Williams) is a drunk, and his latest outburst of behavior that gets stuff thrown out of court has him about to be drummed out of the Boston P.D. His captain offers him an alternative: The sheriff in his old hometown is looking for a promotion to a state job - why doesn't Ian transfer over there and while away the years until retirement in a two-person department in a town where nothing happens? It'll give him a chance to reconnect with his daughter Leanne (Austin Highsmith). One thing has crossed the desk, though - a girl who hasn't been seen in a couple of days. Ian starts digging and finds more than he bargained for. I could find my way home from any where but, it’s the first step that keeps me thinking that someone is going to swoop down and say that it’s that-a-way but, that only happens in someone else's movie, which way did he go? …and , so here I stay stepped out of my mind, I could Find my way Home From any where, I went that –a-way. Whistling dark and distant so low, the moon etches the night… remembering what‘s been whispered, As a raindrop mirroring a light going out splashes in my eyes and slides down my face… The day dream steams in beached thoughts, this particular summers after noon times pictures of another warm July… I am a balloon with only the room in circling me, I can rise or I can fall in this lightly full ball of my separation thinly stretched around all I know… only something sharp can free me. Light Wine, Like To taste Life out of the shadows of delusions Just in time, that perfect day light wine…. The fetal night, that before shadows me again in my position, breached, stretching across these beds of fear, arming myself closely, and tightly into balls of pain, unraveling into sight -ed morning- s that are unbending on birth… Call him crazy no matter what’s said definite -ly a deformation, he drove his mind into the limits, he played the game insane… life for a wife he whored, the death of love his own.. yes better call him crazy… Spake, surely you heard it, only you could have… it’s the first night behind the summer loving place coming to the end of first, wailing them distantly away… Two, to you, you mirror me you’ve come too, we two again, yes you’re to two, too dark … The storm is in the distance- -ent glances that clamors and looks away while flashing me and blowing us into swirling leaving yet still feeling an excited roaring in the visual lighting over horizons of only if these distances could strike in the clouds of doubt and pour down a storm of revision … Stale the stare, oh Love for a breeze a sigh, a deep breather any air to fill to sailing these eyes for change… Ghosts of caresses and rebukes play shrillingly sweet upon misty flutes of restless doubts folded delicately in-to-day ‘s forever moments, living notes of drama no plays all these dancers passed away… A killer lizard dwells in my heart and slithers from dark chamber to dark chamber… Soft are its tangled motions cool are its reptile stoppings as it darts over red clotted stones with a dark eye upon my life-- on it creeps into my veins, I try to sever its head at my wrist… The effort makes me faint, and now coiled about in pools were I lay deeply –graven, Its left me for dead…. tieme back life, dope me under reality, laugh me crying dreams because I am easily moved… TTTTTTT
THIS LIME THREE BOWER (BACK STAGE WEST) Like Irish playwright Conor McPherson’ s the play The Weir and St. Nicholas, this is a modern version of Celtic storytelling. But it has the distinction of being perhaps the lightest and funniest of his plays. McPherson is fond of monologues, but here under Rand Marsh’s direction, the disparate speeches are handled so gracefully that the implied character interaction is made emotionally palpable. The story starts with Joe (Robert Andrus) who’s strongly drawn to a delinquent friend Joe’s brother Frank (Jeremy Stevens) helps their father run a local restaurant, and is resentful of a local bookie making his father’s life miserable. Local college teacher Ray (Seth Macari) is dating their sister, among many other impressionable students. When Frank decides to take action against the bookie, all three get involved in a crime that changes their lives in unexpected ways. Stevens centers the play with a strong dramatic performance, making Frank’s action entirely sympathetic Andrus is perfectly cast as the sensitive Joe, with an Irish accent so accurate it occasionally lapses in impenetrability. Macari, however, has the most entertaining role as the cheerfully debauched Ray, and he brings an admirable comic energy to the part. Playwright Conor McPherson’ s Irish drama meditates on the dramatic theme of “ getting away with it” and asks whether our concepts of ethical behavior are even relevant. The play also offers a portrait of the Irish personality that is decidedly grim, the three very different souls here united only in their impulsiveness, lack of emotional awareness, and the jarring ease with which they betray. Director Rand Marsh ‘ s organic production of a series of monologues voiced by a trio of very diverse figures, whose stories gradually s cohere at an unexpected point. Youthful student Joe (Robert Andrus) develops a crush on a school pal who betrays him unexpected and profoundly. Meanwhile, his rascally older brother Frank (Jeremy Stevens) gets it into his head to rob the local book is, who’ s leaning on his father to pay up an overdue bet. The two brothers’ anecdotes and intertwined with yet another story, that of charming but arrogant and hedonistic philosophy grad student Ray (Seth Macari), who plots to undermine a famous visiting philosopher so as to make a name for himself. Like McPherson’ s better-known play The Weir, the drama’ s action is never depicted visually but is instead described within the stories characters’ recount. And, as in his other plays, the show’ s real star is the lushly blarney-ful, lyrical Irish writing, here used to develop themes of moral corruption and decay set within the context of daily decisions. The admittedly minor story flows over us in a dreamlike, slightly eerie manner, and by the end of the evening, we have learned almost everything there is to know about these people and why they do the things they do. Marsh’ s staging is intimate and unobtrusive, the language allowed to speak for itself. And while moments are undermined by the actors’ occasional awkwardness at getting their mouth around the Irish brogue, the performances are vivid and believable. Macari’ s stunningly heartless Ray, who comes to the realization that he’ s more of a brute that an academic, is especially powerful, but so are Stevens’hot-tempered, instinctively reactive Frank and Andreus’ boyishly endearing Joe. LA WEEKLY PICK OF THE WEEK |
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