‘Love Song’ has drawbacks but should improve in time
Las Vegas Little Theatre’s Fischer Black Box Season this year has focused largely on gay-themed plays, and their 2015 New Works Competition winner, “The Love Song of Sidney J. Stein” by Brian C. Petti, continues that trend. The two-character, rather somber presentation about teen street hustler Dennis (Leonardo Alfaro) and the 50-ish halfway house worker Sidney (Chili Bowles), who tries to reform and save him, lacks focus and energy. Though not without redeeming qualities, the production seems a few rehearsals shy of being ready.
Director Mark Avis’ stagnant blocking and slow pacing don’t help matters, and there’s very little build or tension. Chris Davies’ set of the bare New York City halfway house and, alternatively, Sidney’s bland apartment helps with the logistics, but Avis doesn’t open up his actors into individual playing spaces, leading to a claustrophobic feel. Kendra Harris’ light design further hones in on place with symbolic localized lighting but without the representational lamps onstage for actors to turn off, when they inexplicably dim it feels inconsistent.
Being a two-person play means a tremendous number of lines to memorize, and the performers give the impression that they have just come off book. Both are slow on pickup lines and haven’t developed a sense of connection, crucial to this difficult story about the human need to connect. And whether intentional or not, emotionally heavy aspects overwhelm any humor present in the script.
Alfaro embodies the surface attributes of the damaged, sex-crazed teenager Dennis but isn’t experienced enough as an actor to fully inhabit the part. His delivery is matter-offact and without much grit or nuance. When he talks about fleeing his neglectful family in favor of selling his body on the streets, we don’t get a sense of how painful the experience is or much sense of regret. There is also a shady flirtatiousness and manipulative charm about Dennis that Alfaro is close to capturing, but Dennis should evolve slightly so we can believe in the narrative of a boy, however hopeless, growing slowly through the nurturing of his mentor.
It’s easy to love the poignant, developing performance of Chili Bowles as Sidney. The grief and heartache of having wasted his own youth as a street walker is an emotional thread he carries ceaselessly on his expressive face. Seeking redemption through social work, he sees himself in Dennis and tries to hammer through to the self-destructive young man. “You know what they say about a life unexamined,” he says, taking a cue from Socrates, “it’s not worth living.”
Sidney is full of references that Dennis doesn’t get, especially to showbiz. Petti has written many of these as one-liners that a more showy actor would fling about with glee. But Bowles retains Sidney’s integrity by allowing them to flow naturally yet sadly out of his character. It’s been said Petti was influenced by T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a stream-of-consciousness poem about a middle-aged, modern man disillusioned by the meaninglessness of existence and regrets about the passing of time, which Bowles perfectly embodies.
You probably won’t fall in love with “The Love Song Of Sidney J. Stein,” but hopefully it will get better with time.
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL