J-Powers’ new play “@Heart” is “Love Letters” for a new generation.
If you remember the earlier play, it consisted of a couple sitting on-stage and reading a lifetime of letters they had written to each other over the years. In “@Heart” a young married couple reveal their current activities and anxieties through e-mails and instant messages. She is at home, tending to their baby. He is in the Army, deployed in Afghanistan and moving among front-line sites in the Iraqi war.
He has enlisted, in a patriotic fervor following 9/11, and she is cheerleader supportive. He is hoping to join the unit in which his father, whom he never knew, had fought in and died with during the Vietnam War. But because he is a banker in civilian life, the Army sends him to finance school.
Meanwhile, she is having a series of “bad days.” She gets a flat tire and can’t afford to buy a new one. Then the car is stolen altogether. Then she gets fired from her job at a restaurant, followed by an eviction notice from her landlord. She is having a hard time coping, and his e-mails are devoted to reassuring her.
As time goes on she becomes more frazzled and his assignments become more hazardous. She doesn’t hear from him for days, and sometimes weeks, at a time. As she becomes more desperate, her appeals to him to come home become more and more frantic. The fact that he is unable to, as well as the fact that she learns that he has had an affair, leads to a shredding of their relationship and dire consequences. “@Heart” is a meaty, well-written play. And by well written I don’t mean particularly intellectual. These two are solid, middle-class Americans, initially naïve, sentimental, and well intentioned. They speak in simple clichés; their favorite word (which is used far too often) is “awesome!” But they speak in a language that the audience can identify with, and it is impossible not to sympathize with them and empathize with their growing indecisiveness and faltering energies.
On opening night the actors, both excellent, were Jessica McClendon and Mikey Myers. On subsequent nights the roles will be taken over by J. Teddy Garees and Rachel Jackson and Patrick Scott Lewis and Amanda Martindale.
Paul Linke, who adapted the story and directs the play, has done an excellent job of making what might otherwise be a static production (two actors sitting at tables on a starkly empty stage, not moving for some 70 minutes) into a lively and engaging evening of theater.
The production is also enhanced by Kathi O’Donohue’s lighting design, which indicates who is online for each e-mail exchange. The simplicity of the setting is also emphasized by Eddie Jauregui and J-Powers’ graphic design: Major initiatives of the war are flashed on a screen, using white type in a simple font on a blackened background. “@Heart” may not be a terribly profound look at the war, but it is certainly a realistic look at its effect on a family that is involved in it.
The play will run Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through Jan. 20, 2008. It can be seen at the Ruskin Group Theatre, 3000 Airport Ave., in Santa Monica. For tickets call, (310) 397-3244.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 7, 2007. Read the original PDF.