Compassion play
In the wake of catastrophe, ‘Lava’ explores the themes of loss, solidarity
Great chasms are opening in the world, and nobody is noticing. A small asteroid roared into London, shattering the lives of 12,000 people. The catastrophic event triggers a multitude of grief.
The British playwright James Fritz penned “Lava” before COVID-19 ravaged the world. The play opens on Thursday, Feb. 9, at the Vortex Theatre. But the scenario is similar, director Kendra Rickert said.
“We’ve all been living through this,” she said. “It’s not about the asteroid, but how people are dealing with the pain and loss. Sometimes when we need each other the most, it doesn’t seem possible.”
A young man called Vin is finding it hard to talk. The only person who seems to notice is Rach, who resolves to find out what’s troubling him and help him find his voice again.
“Everybody’s creating stories about what his grief must have been,” Rickert said.
The mildly-irritating Jamie, who has experienced the greatest tragedy of all by losing his mother in the disaster, provides some comic relief.
“He’s very able to communicate the pain he’s in, but he’s over the top,” Rickert said. “And he doesn’t take social cues well.”
When Rach’s family takes in an articulate and charismatic survivor of the asteroid incident, Vin’s silence is no longer her first priority.
“Who has the right to be comforted when everybody else has it worse?” Rickert asked. “Who deserves sympathy?
“It compares people’s traumas,” she added. “It brings up a lot of issues of masculinity, how men deal with grief. It deals with male rage in that it needs to be harnessed.”
Finally, Vin begins to communicate by texting Rach. He says, “Stop trying to help me.”
“He feels that it’s not a masculine thing,” Rickert said.
Rickert wanted to direct a play that gave audience members some hope.
“How do you stay accountable to each other during times of grief?” she asked. “Everybody deserves compassion.”
Fritz structured the play around the five stages of grief.
Written in 2018 and staged as the world moves out of a global pandemic, the themes of loss, and of solidarity in the face of unprecedented tragedy, may have once seemed implausible.
As each character processes their own experiences of loss and trauma, layers of truth and lies peel away, resulting in a deep dive into how we assign value to different kinds of sadness.
“Lava” stars Ashley Deleona, Jordan Olguin, Echo Dobie and Josh Browner.