TOUR-DE-FORCE ACTING IN ROUSTABOUT’S ‘IRON’
It’s easy to tell that the two actors playing a mother and daughter in Roustabout Theatre’s psychological drama “Iron” are related in real life.
San Diego actors Rosina Reynolds and her daughter, Kate Rose Reynolds, have nearly the same eyes, nose, face shape and coloring, and they’re both fiercely intense performers. But their resemblance is the only thing audience members will be able to see clearly in Rona Munro’s crafty puzzle box of a play, which opened Friday in the Moxie Theatre space.
The dark and mysterious 2002 play is set in a Scottish women’s prison, where Fay (Rosina Reynolds) is serving time for murdering her husband. Fifteen years after the crime, Fay receives her first visit from her 25-yearold daughter Josie (Kate Rose Reynolds), who has come to learn more about her late father and the crime that ended his life.
Josie’s motivations seem sincere. She wants to start a relationship with her mother and possibly help Fay appeal her sentence on the grounds of self-defense. But the manipulative, inscrutable and easily riled Fay doesn’t make it easy for her daughter. Fay won’t talk about the night she stabbed her husband and, as time goes on, she seems more interested in living vicariously through Josie than ever making a life for herself outside prison walls.
Fay is a self-described “unicorn,” one of just a handful of women in the Scottish prison system serving time for murder. Statistics show most women who kill are survivors of abuse or are mentally ill. But Fay doesn’t fit neatly into any box, and Josie’s probing questions push Fay to the edge of her stability.
The play runs three hours with intermission, which would feel long if not for the Reynoldses’ gripping and authentic performances. Director Jacole Kitchen keeps the pacing tight and the stage movement fresh by reimagining the women’s dialogue as conversations taking place beyond the walls of the prisoner meeting room.
Rosina’s performance is one of the best in her long theater career in San Diego. She’s at turns gentle and fragile, then cold and calculating. She’s strong as iron and then visibly crumbles with fear and paranoia. Where her Fay is mostly stoic, silent and still, Kate’s Josie is tightly coiled with years of pentup anger and emotion. Her Josie shapeshifts quickly between displays of mistrust, insecurity, hopefulness and a desire to please, as well as the worry that she’s more like her mother than she wants to admit.
Fay’s keepers are two prison guards who alternate between seeming benevolence and cruelty. Guard 1, played by Richard P. Trujillo, is a rigid rulefollower, but Guard 2, played by Jada Alston Owens, bends the rules to both befriend and taunt Fay.
Tony Cucuzella’s austere prison set is brought to harsh life by Paul Durso’s booming sound design that frequently startles with the roaring crash of the prison’s slamming cell doors. Michelle Miles designed lighting, Pamla Stompoly-Erickson designed costumes and Ron Christopher Jones was fight choreographer.
“Iron” is a play about isolation, not just Fay’s separation from society, but from Josie, whose desire to help her mother eventually causes irreparable damage to their relationship and sets Fay on a path of potential self-destruction. The play is a tour-de-force acting showcase for its two talented costars that’s entertaining to watch.