Catherine's Austin, Texas, garden is overgrown and weedy and she has hired a Cuban gardener to bring it under control as Robert Schenkkan's "By the Waters of Babylon" opens at the Edge Theater. Symbolic of two distressed psyches, the garden yields to human intervention before the troubled pair can manage their own problems. Mojitos help.
In this intense play, Patty Ionoff and Kent Randell play off each other effectively --; slowly revealing back stories that have left both emotionally crippled.
She has suffered in an abusive marriage and he escaped Cuba when his book was censored and now has a massive writer's block. We learn about a writer's life in Castro's Cuba.
Both characters unload in lengthy monologues and one wonders if healing is possible.
You know where this is going, but how it gets there, through a melodramatic second act, keeps the audience engaged clear past a nicely written and produced bit of magic realism towards the end.
The second act moves to the bedroom as expected and the set design cleverly makes that happen despite the Edge's small stage area.
Skilled director Warren Sherrill, who was recently appointed associate artistic director at the Edge Theater, has kept the interchange of dialogue paced just right, so each of the pair develops and changes towards a future we hope for.
Ionoff and Randell, with meaty roles many actors would love, keep our interest to the very last lines.
If you go
"By the Waters of Babylon" plays through July 3 at the Edge Theater, 1560 Teller St., Lakewood. Performances: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday, 6 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: theedgetheater.com, 303-232-0363.
from Lakewood Sentinel - Latest Stories http://lakewoodsentinel.com/stories/The-Edge-stages-intense-production,221897
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