Theatre Review: Tender Napalm Storms Through Love
Falling in love is in magnitude comparable to falling out of it. A relationship’s end can leave us reeling with the anxious half-poems we write about it’s end or playing back, in our mind, the relationship as if it is a television show. In essence, falling in and out of love is a theatrical experience, which is why I cannot recall a theatre piece that did not summon heartbreak and a heart’s euphoria. Enter Tender Napalm at HERE Arts Center, 145 6th Avenue, to reveal how love is a poetic, even environmental experiment.
Written by Philip Ridley and directed by David Norwood, Tender Napalm is the most visual “un-visual” you will see. Ridley’s script is filled with images as if every feeling comes with its own picture. He loves using the environment as a symbol for the power-play dynamics of a relationship. For him, the way a lover pushes you away or pulls you towards her or him is equivalent to a tsunami or a tornado. Using a bare set, lighting, and sound, Director Norwood is able to show how Human Nature and Mother Nature are irrevocably bound. Both know how to cause inexplicable damage, while being stunning in its beauty…..if calm.
Amara James Aja and Ayana Major Bey play a man and woman’s relationship from end to beginning; reconstructing to the audience, within 75 minutes, how two people elevated and destroyed each other. These actors turn Ridley’s work into an ethereal documentary on love. They are investigating how virtue can turn into vitriol for another, and Aja and Bey have no qualms throwing their bodies to the ground or scraping their voices for any last note to convoke their characters’ emotions. This play lives and dies according to its actors because its reiterations call for such a bare set, while its text demands heavy feelings.
It is not easy to make an audience feel for a disintegrating couple, they just met, under 75 minutes. As I said, theatre lives off of love with nearly every work discussing its start and finale. Thus, kudos HAS to be given to Aja and Bey’s performances because they bring nuance to how terrifying and terrific love is to its participants. They use their characters like tools t explain why human beings seek love even if it leaves us blind. Their blend of guttural/ celestial choreography and gorgeous language into basic Relationships 101will leave audiences breathless. Click Here To Buy Tickets. Plays until August 4.
