Whitney Holotik and Joey Folsom. Photo courtesy of Broken Gears Project Theatre.

  

Danny and the Deep Blue Sea

by John Patrick Shanley

Presented by Broken Gears Project Theatre

February 4 - 20

at Broken Gears Project Theatre
108 N. Sixth St.
Garland, TX 75040
219-749-7010

$15-$25

8pm Thursdays-Saturdays
Runtime: 70 minutes with no intermission

Valentine's Day is approaching, and romance is in the air. Theaters all over town are doing shows all about love. But if the umpteenth revival of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change is a bit sweet for your taste, consider a trip to Irving, where Broken Gears Project Theatre has mounted a powerfully acted staging of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.

This ode to alienation, by John Patrick Shanley of Doubt notoriety, is about as nontraditional a love story as you could imagine. Danny and Roberta meet in a sleazy Bronx bar and explore four-letter rage, brutality, hyperventilation and leap-in-the-sack sex. But, ultimately, the find something akin to love. Kinda...I think.

Director Nathan Autrey's two-person cast doesn't miss a beat. Whitney Holotik, as Roberta, is already seated at a table sipping beer and sulking herself into character when the house opens. She had plenty of time to mood up on Friday, when the performance was delayed 30 minutes to accommodate a reviewer who got lost en route. (This is easy to do.) It's still a nifty touch, although the impact is blunted by a silly and ambience-shattering pre-curtain speech.

John Turturro won an Obie as the original Danny, but that doesn't seem to intimidate Broken Gears' Joey Folsom. (An actor with a prison for a namesake seems altogether appropriate for this raw nerve of a character.) He half-swaggers, half-slinks to a table near Roberta, pitcher and glass in hand, then goes about repairing the damage from a brawl minutes earlier. Danny  fights a lot. It's his main avenue of social communication. Fellow truck drivers call him "the beast." Shanley lavishes some vivid and cruel prose on Danny's description of the fight, and Folsom savors each strident syllable.

Can Roberta tame the beast? She's no shrinking violet herself: Divorced, living with her parents and a troubled teenage son and an ugly secret. She's no stranger to blind rage, either, as Holotik demonstrates in a fierce and chair-punishing tantrum.

You want desperately for these two misfits to find some peace, if not love. Shanley doesn't deliver anything like a standard happy ending, but he does supply what could be termed a hopeful one.

David McKee's lighting is appropriately shadowy in the bar, and it doesn't ever get very bright. Again, this seems fitting.

If you haven't gleaned this already, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea isn't a family show. It's what movie reviewers call a "hard R." Early in the show, Danny remarks: "Sorry, I got a bad mouth."

Believe it.

Note: Broken Gears has promised to add a map to its Web site. That should help. Just in case, however, have the theater's phone number handy as you navigate Loop 12. And here's a tip: After turning off East Irving Boulevard, start looking to your right for a big sign proclaiming "ISP." That's the name of the film studio that houses Broken Gears in a tiny  black box theater.