In search of soup and salvation
Lost souls include those dishing out the help in ‘Concourse’
Redemption can be a long and difficult road, especially when the path — and even the destination — is unclear. A church soup kitchen is certainly a place where you’d find people who feel lost and in need of help — and not just among the
REVIEW
clientele. In “Grand Concourse,” the Heidi Schreck play that Shotgun Players is running in repertory with the rest of its 2016 season, the people working in the soup kitchen are working through issues of their own that brought them there — or trying to work through them, anyway.
The play takes place entirely in the kitchen, with the dining hall and its clients invisible behind some double doors. Nina Ball’s highly detailed set brings to life a very organized and well-stocked kitchen equipped to prepare food for a multitude. In director Joanie McBrien’s staging, the room is usually abuzz with activity; it seems like someone’s almost always chopping vegetables.
The kitchen is run by Shelley, a plainclothes nun who’s quietly, deeply conflicted about being a nun. The first time we see her, she’s praying awkwardly, apologetically, at the microwave. As she explains later, she’s had a hard time praying lately, and uses the microwave timer to keep her in practice. In a nicely nuanced performance by Cathleen Riddley, Shelley conceals her own crises well. She’s brisk and cheery in training a new volunteer and both patient and no-nonsense dealing with unstable people. Still, we see her growing frustration and doubts about her path gnawing at her, even if we hadn’t already heard her tell the microwave about them.
Always barging in is Frog, a twitchy but charismatic old hippie regular customer who likes to charm his way into the kitchen with rambling stories about past travels and drug trips or with non sequitur jokes. As played by Kevin Clarke, Frog is such an enchantingly oddball character that you can see why he gets away with breaking the rules all the time.
From the moment Megan Trout enters as 19-year-old new volunteer Emma, it’s obvious that there’s something seriously off about her. She’s there to help out in order to prove something to herself, and whatever it is has to do with her selfworth. She keeps mentioning disturbing things about being kicked out of college and about bouts of selfloathing. Most of the time she’s eager to help, if overly anxious to be liked, but then she’ll do something bizarre and sort of mean — especially to Oscar (a charming Caleb Cabrera), a playfully flirtatious Dominican coworker who’s easily the most well-adjusted person in the play. On some level we’re always left wondering what exactly Emma’s deal is, and therein lies much of the tension of the story.
Although the characters are well-drawn and adeptly played, it’s a slow-moving play that seems to take a long time to get where it’s going. There’s a major twist late in the second act that’s very easy to predict early on (in fact, it seems inevitable), and a couple of times when it’s surprising that the play hasn’t ended. But some viscerally difficult moments toward the end and a tidily satisfying ending make up for some of the meandering along the way. Ultimately “Grand Concourse” is absolutely a redemption narrative; it’s just that the redemption in question looks a lot different from the one we’re led to expect.
Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and follow him at Twitter.com/ shurwitt.