'Some Voices' worth listening to

The title of "Some Voices," receiving its Orange County premiere from the
Rude Guerrilla Theater Company, ostensibly refers to those heard by its
schizophrenic hero. Joe Penhall's 1994 debut play follows a young British mental patient through a culture that ignores its disenfranchised.

These bureaucratic casualties are the real objective of "Some Voices,"
released as a film in 2000 starring Daniel Craig and Kelly Macdonald. Ray (the
amazing Paul Pakler in the Rude Guerrilla production) leaves the hospital to
live with older brother Paul (Alex Dorman), a restaurateur who fears that Ray
will echo their father's alcohol-fueled decline.

Wandering about instead of seeing his shrink, unmedicated Ray defends
pregnant Irish welfare case Laura (Brenda Kenworthy) from Dave (Robert M. Tully), her abusive lover. Ray and Laura's ensuing romance hardly calms Paul's
concerns; nor does homeless Ives (Kurt Jarrard), Ray's former institution mate.
Moreover, pathological Dave is rabid to get Laura back.

Rude Guerrilla homes in on Penhall's gritty vernacular and quirky humor.
Steven Parker's sly direction nails the spiky naturalism, aided by his resourceful set pieces, Shannon Blas' lighting and the perfectly accented ensemble. Pakler, who recalls Sal Mineo, is a major discovery. His mercurial turn spurs
Dorman's sensitive Paul, and Kenworthy's feisty Laura, and the otherworldly
Jarrard and maniacal Tully are representative.

The chief liability is textual overreach. As character study, "Some Voices"
is affecting, but its fuzzy social comment falls short of big-picture statement. Nevertheless, Penhall's kitchen-sink power is undeniable, and this
invested reading is recommendable.

-- David C. Nichols

"Some Voices," Empire Theater, 200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 30. $18. (714) 547-4688. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.
Friday, September 16, 2005
'Some Voices' in Santa Ana
Review: Rude Guerrilla shows the deeper meaning of 1994 British drama, in its Orange County premiere.
By ERIC MARCHESE
Special to the Register

What happens inside the mind of a young mental patient? The title of "Some Voices" would seem to indicate that Joe Penhall's drama deals directly with that subject - but, although it's true that Penhall's protagonist, a 20-something Londoner named Ray, hears voices when he neglects to take his medication, the 1994 play covers a lot more ground.
Like his countrymen, playwrights Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane, Penhall is concerned with the tolls greed and selfishness take on a free society, whether British or American. It's not surprising, then, to see Rude Guerrilla Theater Company offering the Orange County premiere of "Some Voices," for in recent years, the troupe has specialized in works by Ravenhill and Kane, as gritty and raw as they are compassionate.
Penhall has nothing if not compassion for his characters. There's Ray himself, socially awkward even while trying to put his best foot forward. There's his older brother Pete, desperate to help Ray but uncertain how much longer he can hold it together. Fellow mental patient Ives is basically Ray's only friend in the world. Ray would like to get to know Laura, an Irish expatriate, but she's busy dealing with her on-again, off-again boyfriend Dave, a diamond smuggler with a violent temper and a taste for alcohol.
Though it was written more than a decade ago, "Some Voices" addresses a post-9/11 world where it's every man for himself. Penhall's West London is a world where only money talks, crime and violence are rampant and the dreams of decent folks - like that of Ray and Pete's late dad: to own and run a restaurant - quietly die. "Voices" is a perceptive look at five individuals who, no matter how desperately they try to make a human connection, are ultimately alone.
These themes and more come out in director Steven Parker's well-cast, trenchant staging, which is as much a series of character studies as a gripping story. In lesser hands, its characters and their situations would be boiled down to stereotypes - but in nearly every scene, Penhall defies expectations conditioned within us by less skilled writing.
Parker and his cast are sensitive to this quality, giving us finely nuanced performances even while eliciting the text's sly, gentle humor. Paul Pakler's Ray is a winning little guy disillusioned with life, tired of having to take daily doses of anti-psychotic medications. Pakler softens Ray's pugnacity, playing up his vulnerability. Whether Ray is fumbling for words or, drunk on beer, voicing his opinions, the character is more complex than he first appears, and Pakler's layered performance is more than up to the task.
Ray's touchingly clumsy attempts to connect with Laura, and his concern for her, form the core of "Voices." Brenda Kenworthy plays her scenes in counterpoint to Pakler's work, her Laura spiky and weary, with a fatalistic air and the forbidding exterior of one who prefers solitude to human company. Even in her more tender scenes with Ray, Kenworthy's Laura is quiet and thoughtful. Deservedly or not, she's wary of any man's romantic attention.
Alex Dorman's expressive portrayal of Pete is also gratifyingly shaded, his frustration over trying to put his foot down with ne'er-do-well Ray undergirded by filial affection and the sense of protection only an older sibling can feel for a younger one. Dorman's Pete isn't just more stable and responsible than Ray; he's patient, nurturing and forgiving - the most human of the story's characters.
Robert M. Tully imbues the vicious, brutal Dave with an air of danger, a relentless quality that makes it obvious he isn't about to give Laura up, and something more - the ability to come across as genuinely, even humbly, willing to make amends for past hurts inflicted upon Laura. Kurt Jarrard uses the essentially unattractive figure of the blunt, grimy Ives to elicit our compassion, giving us poignant, fragmented hints of the man's identity before he lost his sanity.
Parker's hand isn't just firmly at the helm of a tightly directed, well-paced staging, but also as dialect coach and scenic and sound designer. The cast's dialects are spot-on, whether Pakler, Dorman and Jarrard's blue-collar London accents or those of Kenworthy and Tully, whose characters hail from Limerick. Parker uses music that's a cross between jazz and techno to heighten the script's tension, while his minimalist set features a streetlight, a crumbling brick wall and a few sticks of furniture to suggest the play's dozen or so settings.


Freelance writer Eric Marchese has covered entertainment for the Register since 1984.
THEATER Vol. 11 No. 03 September 23 - 29, 2005
Ties That Bind
These Voices could be ours
by JOEL BEERS


Any play that begins with one insane asylum inmate admonishing another for
shitting on the balcony and ends with a knife-wielding schizophrenic sounds
tailor-made for the Rude Guerrilla Theater Company. Especially when we note
that author Joe Penhall hails from the in-yer-face school of British
playwrighting, that ferociously audacious academy of sexually politicized,
polemically violent writers that RGTC faves Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane
epitomize.

So it sounds odd to think of the word “restraint” when describing Some
Voices, Penhall’s 1994 breakout play. Yet this production is exactly that.
For once, this is a play, and a production, in which what isn’t seen and
what isn’t said stand out. It’s not that Penhall’s examination of mental
illness and dysfunction among a small segment of Britain’s lower class lacks
episodes of graphic sex and violence. It’s that those scenes actually serve,
rather than define, what is, at its heart, a story about love and family and
how difficult it can be to break those pernicious ties that bind.

Ray (Paul Pakler) is a schizophrenic released into the custody of his
brother, Pete (Alex Dorman), who runs a café. His desire to assimilate
hamstrung by mental illness and chemical dependence, the reluctantly
medicated Ray stumbles upon an abusive bloke named Dave (Bob Tully) and his
pregnant girlfriend, Laura (Brenda Kenworthy). Heedless of Dave’s warning
never to fuck with another man’s misery, Ray befriends Laura, pouring petrol
upon a simmering pot itching to ignite.

In director Steven Parker’s hands, Penhall’s play unfolds seamlessly. The
characters’ yearning for some semblance of normalcy seems universal even
amidst hammers to the skull and gross dysfunction. A keen sense of humanity
infuses the proceedings; you believe and empathize with these characters,
their obsessions, flaws and sicknesses seeming uncomfortably familiar.

As Ray, Pakler’s ability to make his quite insane character completely real
helps make Some Voices compelling. He avoids physical or vocal
idiosyncrasies, approaching the character as someone who, but for the grace
of God or mild neurotransmitter disturbance, could be any one of us. Rather
than freak or anomaly, Ray is just unfortunate, someone desperately close to
lucidity who just can’t quite get there.

Penhall is a superb writer; when one character muses that the most glorious
sight is that of an empty bridge, the seemingly innocuous line takes on
grandly poetic dimension. His ability to transcend his tale’s sordid
circumstances helps Some Voices seem less of a voyeuristic glimpse into the
soiled underclass and more of a metaphor for the human condition stuck in
neutral. His voice is mature and insightful, and that’s probably why he’s
the first such confrontational playwright to earn a production at the more
mature, conservative environs of South Coast Repertory (Dumb Show, Penhall’s
2004 meditation on the culture of celebrity, opens Sept. 25).

Hiply leftist and relevant enough for more radical theaters, yet eloquent
and composed enough for more mainstream ears, Penhall—at least based on this
surprisingly subtle production—sounds like a voice to be reckoned with. In a
time, and a culture, when outrage and irony are the currency du jour, his
more measured approach to insanity on a personal and societal level feels
disarmingly appropriate and alarmingly timely.

SOME VOICES AT EMPIRE THEATER, 200 N. BROADWAY, SANTA ANA, (714) 547-4688.
FRI.-SAT., 8 P.M.; SUN., 2:30 P.M. ALSO THURS., SEPT. 29, 8 P.M. THROUGH
SEPT. 30. $15-$18.