Pale Horse
December 06, 2006
By Eric Marchese

Joe Penhall’s 1995 script is the blackest of black comedies, wringing laughter from the crisis of confidence that rocks Charles Strong, a South London bar owner, when his ex-wife is run over by a bus. “Love kills us,” the undertaker tells Charles, and indeed, though Charles craves a love to replace his beloved wife, he can’t get past her death. Just as confused—and with as much pent-up anger—is Lucy, a woman half Charles’ age who takes a job at his bar. Their rocky affair, and the issues it raises for both characters, is at the core of a story that plays nihilism, death, religious faith (or lack thereof), alcoholism, and S&M for laughs. Penhall expertly flips from comedy to tragedy in the blink of an eye, and Steven Parker’s staging captures that wistful quality without sacrificing any of the text’s explosive laughter.

Bryan Jennings’ Charles is earthy and relaxed even after tragedy bowls him over, a soft-spoken bloke who has never wanted anything more than to run a pub and who is now tortured by the realization that that’s just not enough. If Jennings lends Parker’s staging pathos, he’s matched by Erika Tai, whose Lucy is as much a lost soul as Charles, masking her fear with youthful bravado. Adam Del Conte, Paul Knox, Roxaneh Renton, and Marnelle Ross ably fulfill the story’s remaining 11 roles. Knox is notable as Charles’ mercurial restaurateur buddy, whose cheeky way with Lucy has a vicious side that precipitates a critical plot point, as is Del Conte as an obnoxious drunk whose smarmy ways with Lucy also come to a serious boil.

Parker’s impressive set features the accurately detailed bar of Charles’ Wandsworth-area pub and the site of his wife’s grave, replete with dirt and rocks. A score of mostly British rock supercharges this fine, thought-provoking production.

Presented by Rude Guerrilla Theater Company at the Empire Theater, 202 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. (Also Thu. 8 p.m. Dec. 14.) Nov. 17-Dec. 16. (714) 547-4688.

Poorly Gaited
Out-of-step subplots hobble Pale Horse
By JOEL BEERS
Thursday, December 7, 2006

On one level, Joe Penhall's 1996 play Pale Horse is a not-so-unusual domestic drama about a man losing his wife and his subsequent struggles with grief.

But this is Penhall, one of those viscerally oriented, in-yer-face, English playwrights Rude Guerrilla theater loves to champion, which means there's plenty of sex, sauce, spankings, barroom beatings and dark humor to elevate Pale Horse above the whining and crying that plague most plays about death, mortality and loss.

Still, the more lurid aspects of Penhall's play--along with his typically precise dialogue, which captures a less-than-genteel slice of London's social strata aren’t enough to make this a riveting piece, at least not in this production.

Pale Horse runs on two tracks: as brutally honest exploration of the inefficient way that Charles, the proprietor of a rundown London boozer, deals with the death of his wife; and as mediation on faith and spirituality in a time of cynicism and moral floundering.

But rarely do the tracks run side by side. The gritty realism of Charles’actions in the wake of his wife’s death is undermined by the playwright’s groping attempts to grapple with loftier themes. It feels like a classic case of a playwright trying to make his play bigger than it is.

This production, helmed by Steven Parker, merely adds to the play's ungainly structure. The set's realism--600 pounds of dirt and a decent enough representation of a London pub--is countered by the ominously portentous sound of late-model Johnny Cash croaking about the apocalypse and houses of pain. The acting, while quite solid at spots (Bryan Jennings does English as well as anybody in OC, maybe because he is) is occasionally hindered by a combination of erratic dialects and shrieking voices, making Penhall’s dialogue hard to decipher.

To cop from another English playwright, there’s plenty of sound and plenty of fury in Pale Horse, but what it ultimately signifies is tough to figure out, at least in this viewing.

PALE HORSE, PRESENTED BY RUDE GUERRILLA, AT THE EMPIRE THEATER, 200 N. BROADWAY, SANTA ANA, (714) 547-4688. FRI.-SAT., 8 P.M.; SUN., 2:30 P.M.; ALSO THURS., DEC. 16, 8 P.M. THROUGH DEC. 18. $10-$18.