Lovechild+Paper

Hillary Morgan October 5, 2010

//Lovechild// Response

//The Life and Times of Tulsa Lovechild //by Greg Owens is the story of a thirty-four year old woman traveling to a Tulsa motel to scatter her mother’s ashes. Along the way she meets Ed, an actor taking a break from show business, Kelly Jo, an aspiring Miss America on the run from her love-able yet overbearing redneck boyfriend Clyde, Rose and Valerie, a set of conjoined twins trying to raise money to separate, and Bob, the Russian immigrant owner of the motel where she was born. Throughout the play, the spirit of Tulsa’s mother gives Tulsa advice on-stage, and there are accompanying flashbacks of Tulsa’s parents fighting about the Vietnam War, her father’s death in Vietnam, and her mother’s subsequent puzzling remarriage to a war advocate. A deeper, more sinister theme of a Vietnam sergeant-turned-crooked-Congressman sends a staunch anti-war background to the entire play. Owens conveyed his meaning very well, using varying methods to keep the play from becoming stale. It begins with Bob, the motel owner, discussing the many types of people he meets running a hotel. From there, it intersperses Tulsa on a job interview with a flashback to her parents in the 1960s. As they begin to argue about her father being drafted and her mother attending a rally in Chicago instead of taking Tulsa to his parents’ home, Tulsa answers questions from an unheard interviewer. As the tension between her parents breaks, so does her own composure, and she eventually yells at the interviewer (ruining her chances for the job). Each scene after that is told with a different narrator, though Tulsa and eventually her burgeoning relationship with hitchhiking Ed are the main focus. All of the different characters, seemingly unconnected throughout the first act, meet and connect with each other during the second act, forming a cohesive whole and juxtaposing the different forms of love and friendship. The subject matter is certainly entertaining, ranging from hilarious to poignant. The main theme of the value of relationships is certainly an important topic, as well as the underlying theme of war and anti-war values. The actors were stupendous. The “helpers” of the play, wearing pale blue suits and face paint, were the first people on stage, sitting on the floor and shifting positions before the play started to grab the audience’s attention and let them know that this was no ordinary play. Throughout, they were seen and unseen, moving props, cleaning the floor, and acting out non-speaking roles. This helped to connect the audience to the play as outsiders who may not be speaking but were definitely involved. The main actor who played Tulsa was incredibly powerful, ranging from angry to heartbroken, all the while trying to maintain a shield of sarcasm to protect herself from falling in love with Ed. Likewise, the actor playing Ed balanced his frustration with Tulsa and his admiration for her very convincingly. The performances of Rose and Valerie seemed heartfelt, as well as that of Bob, who seemed genuinely thrilled to be of service in any capacity. Tulsa’s mother, unseen by everyone but her daughter, managed to make her opinions well known, as did the crooked preacher. By far, though, the most realistic were the performances of Tulsa’s stepfather, Clyde, and Kelly Jo. Maybe it is because these types of people are prevalent in Georgia, but the actors did not have problems seeming sincere, underscoring the awkward, bumbling, misunderstood love that was felt by these characters. The physical production was good. The stage itself was painted blue, with clouds and turnpike signs scattered throughout, and each piece of the set proved useful in multiple scenes. All of the blue wore on my nerves, and it seemed clichéd when the lighting changed to red to convey a darker or scarier theme (Tulsa hitting Ed, the howling savior at the church that Rose and Valerie were robbing, Vietnam). Ed’s character seemed highly imaginative and not incredibly realistic. It was not simply the Hollywood starlet aspect, but his incredibly easy going manner. He practically told Tulsa he loved her, was brushed off, and went about his business—he did not even seem to bothered by it. His character lacked explanation: why he wanted to go back to Hollywood even though he seemed to hate it; why he would even choose to be an actor to begin with. The most unnecessary piece of the play was that of the sergeant/congressman. The only reason I was able to connect them was because of the name Pike, though I was still unable to tell if it was the same person or if they were just related. It seemed disjointed from the rest of the play, as if the author wanted to show how evil the nuts and bolts of war were so he put in a dastardly villain at the last minute. Similarly, the relationship between Rose and Bob was unexpected, to say the least. There was no back story whatsoever on how they met or fell in love, and I found myself thinking that it was slightly off-putting, since Bob was at least fifty and Rose and Valerie seemed no older than thirty. These character interpretations had less to do with the actors or the physical place than with the imagination of the author. The audience seemed to love the play as much as I did. When it was funny, people laughed. When it was sad, they were still. With the limited space of the theater, my seat was directly in the way of the staircase that some actors came down, which was slightly awkward. During intermission, the people around me seemed just as confused by the sergeant/congressman as I was. Mostly, I heard people talking about Kelly Jo and how similar she was to the people that they knew in real life, which made me view her and Clyde in a more personal light. Surprisingly, the person sitting next to me hated Tulsa: she thought that Tulsa was annoying and too high-strung and would “never be able to get a man with that attitude.” Though I agreed that Ed and Tulsa falling in love seemed a bit abrupt, I thought that Tulsa was an interesting product of her mother and stepfather, though this person did make me consider why I liked Tulsa in the first place. I can and did urge my friends to see this play, though I have not read any reviews for it. I do this with plays that I like that I think my friends would enjoy (for instance, I would not advise my grandfather, who was staunchly pro-Vietnam war, to go see this play no matter how amazing I thought it was). I would certainly consider searching out any other works by Gregory Owens, and if there was a production of another one of his plays nearby, I would certainly go see it. All in all, I enjoyed the experience very much.