Lack of development cripples 'Darkweed'

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic

•	'Darkweed' 8 tonight, last show 2 p.m. tomorrow Ernst Lab Theatre, UH-Manoa $9; 956-7655

Poage's script doesn't offer much to a mature audience — except, perhaps, a memory of what it was to be young and desperately creative, but lacking depth or full vision. It does possess an authentic raw quality that fits a scribbling young artist who slashes at life while hunched over blank paper.

But we meet the artist's characters before we meet their creator.

The first is modeled on his school counselor (Alexandria Baldwin), helping her husband get elected to political office by sign waving in traffic. Darkweed (Jonathan Egged), in a black leather raincoat and mime makeup, confronts her with doubts about her husband's fidelity. Darkweed also berates the candidate (Gilbert Molina), until the husband and wife succumb to bitter argument.

Blackout and cut to the next frame — a pair of bloody store mannequins hanging from a tree limb, still waving at traffic. It is suggested that they've bludgeoned each other to death with their candidate signs. It seems that Darkweed's power as a superhero is to pass unnoticed, yet to provoke all others into disclosing their deepest thoughts.

Finally we meet Fred, the artist (Chris Doi) in a room he shares with his drafting table and a lifesized inflatable doll. As Fred and Darkweed debate the ultimate fate of the school counselor — a series of bloody endings featuring too many long knives — we realize that his art is Fred's compensation for an unrewarding reality.

He has no friends, no other activities, and lives in the shadow of his athletic older brother Ray, much like the weed that grows unnoticed inside a fence or beside a house. That minor realization comes about 15 minutes into the script. While it's only a one-act, that still leaves about an hour to repeat the fantasy/reality conflict.

We meet Ray (Terry Allen) and a couple of his look-alike girlfriends (Jessica Behner and Cindy Beth Davis). We see Fred's frustration. We see him grapple increasingly with banal reality by alternately banishing and accepting his fantasy superhero. We see him act out with the long knives and retreat to his cartooning.

What we don't see is a developed point. Are his last desperate murders real or imaginary? Unfortunately we don't much care.