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Volume CXXXII, Number 21 |
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Drugs, date rape, and some great acting
MACAELA FLANAGAN
STAFF WRITER
Lights up. Enter Vince: dancing and singing to Steve Miller Band's "Swingtown," chugging beer (literally), and hanging around a Motel 6 room in his underwear. I thought I was in store for a comedy. Instead, Tape proves to be a dark journey down memory lane for three former high school friends.
Tape is the story of Vince-in town for his old friend Jon's film premiere-and both of their relationships with Amy, another high school friend. Ten years earlier, the friends had a "love triangle" of sorts: Vince dated Amy, but they never slept together; Amy and Vince broke up at the end of their senior year in high school, and she slept with Jon soon afterward; Vince and Jon were best friends. The twist? The sex wasn't consensual: Jon raped Amy.
Monday night in Kresge was the setting for an emotional hour and fifteen minute play that refused to give a straight answer. Tape was a directorial independent study for senior Rebecca Geehr, and the cast of three is made up of seniors as well: Josh Police as Vince, Josh Wolff as Jon, and Amy Funkenstein as Amy; The roles were not easy ones, and each actor allowed for traces of their character to come alive at precisely the right moment, which made for a sharp play that left the audience on edge.
Vince is a twenty-eight-year-old drug dealer/user who works as a volunteer fireman on the side. Police allowed us to see the character's many flaws just before contradicting it and showing that he is smarter than he lets on; we think he is just a frat boy who never grew up, but little do we know what is cooking in that coked-up head of his. Aside from the drugs and drinking, we learn he also has some "violent tendencies" that are the result of "unresolved issues," or at least that is why his most recent ex-girlfriend broke up with him. He has wound up in Lansing, Michigan for Jon's film and decided to resolve something that has haunted him since high school: make Jon apologize to Amy.
At first, Jon seems more grounded than the immature Vince, and Vince uses this weekend together to stir up Jon's forgotten high school baggage. The tension is high as Vince and Jon fight about Jon's pretentiousness and Vince's laziness, until the conversation turns to Vince demanding that Jon admit he raped Amy. After many steps ranging from "verbally coercing" her into sex to playing rough, Jon admits to pinning her down and forcing sex on her. Vince walks quietly over to his beer bag and removes a tape recorder that has just captured Jon's confession. The stage gets eerily quiet, and from here on, Wolff convincingly allows his character to unravel as his secret from ten years ago is exposed and now documented. He is forced to face his truths.
Tape is not necessarily about Amy as a rape victim. It is about what happens ten years later, and why Vince brought it up after all this time. It's evident throughout the play that Jon and Vince have constantly had a competition in their lives, and Amy was no exception. Realizing this, she throws the last punch. She calls the police. Vince flushes his drugs down the toilet in a panic, and Jon remorsefully and quietly accepts his own fate as he awaits the squad car to take him away for a rape he committed, and forgot about, so long ago.
The catch? Amy didn't call. And she leaves, telling Vince he didn't obtain this confession for her peace of mind but for his own, because he could never deal with the fact that his best friend slept with his high school sweetheart and he didn't. She also leaves knowing Jon will have to deal with the rape and her refusal to accept his apology for the rest of his life. She leaves as the victor, but, she's still the victim of the rape. Jon and Vince's competition forced her to once again face the traumas of rape, which she coldly refused to discuss with either male. She may have outsmarted them, but at the end she is undeniably the one who has suffered the most.
The play was performed on one set and in one act. The actors by no means fumbled-if they did, it wasn't noticed by this observer. Because of the lack of characters on the stage, the importance of tension to the story's plot, and the rapid-fire dialogue, the actors were not allowed to take a break even for an instant.
Had the momentum died in the play's many heated debates, the entire show would have been a failure. Police, Wolff, and Funkenstein never faltered and delivered a high paced, intensely emotional show that proved theater is alive and thriving at Bowdoin.
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