Father struggles to bridge gap in ‘Secret Mask’
Ernie (James Pickering) is suffering from stroke-induced aphasia. George (Drew Parker), his 40-year-old-son, has just flown into Vancouver to see him — for the first time since Ernie skipped town when George was just 2.
That’s how things begin in Canadian playwright Rick Chafe’s “The Secret Mask,” now receiving its U.S. premiere in a Next Act Theatre production being directed by Edward Morgan.
The jagged and separated jigsaw pieces on Rick Rasmussen’s set suggest how wide the water has grown between father and son; they also reflect Ernie’s frequent inability to solve the puzzle of language. He calls a pen a “panker.” Dead people are “cardboard.” A menu’s smorgasbord is “the whole Jesus on the cross.”
Aided by a compassionate speech pathologist named Mae – chief among several female roles embodied by Tami Workentin — George begins making sense of what Ernie is trying to say; Morgan and his actors get physical to ensure the audience can follow along.
Ernie’s steady improvement tracks the increased communication between a father and son working through their own version of aphasia, product of four decades during which they’ve exchanged neither phone calls nor letters. Learning to speak again, Ernie at least has a trove of memories to recover. Father and son together have almost none.
Late reveals make it hard to credit the notion that these two have been this completely out of touch. But Pickering and Parker make it easy to credit the painstaking dance through which they begin to come together.
Bearing a striking resemblance to an aging Hemingway, Pickering channels that dying lion’s combination of wary suspicion, truculence, pride and frustration at a world he no longer fully understands – as well as the embarrassment and shame that he hasn’t used his time in that world more wisely.
Making his Milwaukee debut, Parker is a sharp chip off the old block. While his George can be impatient and angry, one also easily sees the underlying hurt of a man who’d like to reach out and touch but doesn’t know how. He buries himself in work and yells at his own teenage son to mask all that he feels.
George’s many calls home to that never-seen son and to his own wife — cheating on him and brainwashing their boy — is a major flaw in an otherwise compelling show; they join things said by Ernie and George’s conversations with his own never-seen mother in suggesting that one of the chief reasons why fathers and sons drift apart is because vindictive women poison the well.
Those obtrusive telephonic sidebars add flab to a show that needs a trim and takes too long to conclude. But Ernie and George will not be denied; Pickering and Parker ensure their thaw feels true. It’s beautifully played — and reason aplenty to see this warm show.
“The Secret Mask” continues through Dec. 10 at Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. For tickets, visit www.nextact.org. Read more about this production at TapMilwaukee.com.