Dawn Offers Bleak Outlook

With a title like Dawn, Thomas Bradshaw’s new play suggests a streak of light in a world of darkness. It is understandable how one could take his or her place in the 40-seat theater of The Flea expecting to partake in an intimate experience of redemption, hope and new beginnings.

While the most optimistic of viewers may be able to extract these sentiments from the show still, one of more average sensibility is likely to leave the theater feeling pensive and disturbed. Dawn revolves around Hampton (Gerry Bamman), an alcoholic struggling to change his abusive ways and reach out to his alienated family. Despite his successes in sobriety and reconciliation, however, the trauma his former life has caused runs deeper than anyone expects, and the play quickly turns to other issues: pedophilia, incest, and questions of loyalty and blame. Thus while Bradshaw’s story is in part about recovery and resolution, it is also about loss—loss of innocence, loss of love, and loss of life. As a result of this tension, Bradshaw’s intentions are slightly hazy, making the theater-going experience difficult to articulate.

This sense of uncertainty is not just Bradshaw’s doing, either. With a minimalist set by Michael Goldsheft and script energized by raw emotion, the cast’s quality of acting becomes an inevitable focal point. Unfortunately, the talent of this group proves to be extremely mixed. Obie-award winner Gerry Bamman gives a dynamic performance as the family patriarch and play’s protagonist, effectively contributing an element of dark humor and perverse lightness to so somber a tale. Drew Hildebrand, Jenny Seastone Stern, and Laura Esterman are equally colorful as his respective son, granddaughter, and ex-wife.

However, other performances rested gratingly on a single note. That of Irene Walsh as Susan, Hampton’s younger second wife, consists of monotonous droning and bellowing. Likewise, Kate Benson’s rendition of Laura, Hampton’s daughter, was uncomfortably strained—she delivered every line with a reddened face and neck veins popping, in a way that jars the audience away from the theatrical world to worry about the actress’ wellbeing. Both Walsh and Benson drain the dialogue of any potential subtlety or complexity, reducing their characters to caricatures.

Because of this abandonment of emotional detail and the attempt to take on the oppressively heavy subjects of addiction, incest, and pedophilia all at once, there is suspicion that the production of Dawn is shocking just for shock’s sake. However, even if this is as deep as the artistic objective runs, the play at least leaves you haunted by something, whatever that something may be.