One Flea Spare @ Second Thought Theatre
Photos by Evan Michael Woods
—Reviewed by Sam Lisman
As the lights went up and the applause began, I turned to a friend who was also attending the show and said, “the acting was fantastic, but…” As my sentence trailed off, she finished the thought for me: “…that was a weird-ass play.”
She was right. Naomi Wallace’s One Flea Spare, playing now at Second Thought Theatre, is a weird play. It’s late 1665 or early 1666, the Second Anglo-Dutch War is raging, and London is ravaged by plague. The King and Court (and everyone else who possibly could) have quit the city for Oxford or more remote locations. Several sources state that a full quarter of the city’s population died in the Great London Plague. If anyone in a household (including servants) showed a “token” of the plague, as the lesions were called, they would be boarded up inside for 28 days. The windows were nailed shut from the outside; only one would be left open to take in supplies and allow communication with the outside world. Guards watched the houses to prevent escape—when they weren’t busy collecting bodies, that is.
William Snelgrave (Gregory Lush) and his wife, Darcy (Christie Vela) had planned to leave London when it became apparent the epidemic wouldn’t blow over quickly, but one of the servants fell sick. Now the servants are dead, and the Snelgraves have only a few days remaining in their lockdown; they’re almost free to go.
Almost, that is, until two other people break into the house. They didn’t come in together; they don’t know each other. Bunce (Drew Wall), a sailor, thought the house was empty, and I’m not sure what Morse (Monserrat Rodriguez), a 12-year-old girl, thought when she crept in. (If a reason was given, I missed it while getting acclimated to the accents.)
Snelgrave is livid upon discovering the trespassers, but it's nothing compared to his dismay when the guard, Kabe (Carson Wright), informs him that the clock has been reset, and all four must remain locked in the house together for the next four weeks. When the indignant Snelgrave demands to know why the guards didn’t prevent the break-in, he’s told rather smugly that their job is to keep people from leaving the house, not to stop others from going in.
The set, designed by Cindy Ernst Godinez, is deceptively simple: the Snelgrave’s drawing room, almost bare of furniture, and a window open to the street. In a very nice touch, there’s a rat among the cobwebs below the stage. Jacob Hughes’s lighting and John Flores’s sound keep the macabre atmosphere of a dying city front and center. The historically accurate costumes, by Amanda Capshaw, play pivotal roles in the plot, but also do a great deal to accentuate the class differences between the characters. The contrast between Bunce’s simple sailor’s outfit and the elegance worn by the Snelgraves is striking.
Equally striking, as I mentioned, is the skill of the actors, ably directed by Carson McCain (STT’s artistic head). Lush is every step the near-aristocrat he portrays. His accent and enunciation are on target, as are his mannerisms, and most importantly, his sneer. Vela begins the play as a perfect Restoration-era upper-class wife, but transforms, in a way that feels both complete and natural, into something else as her secrets are revealed. Wall is vulnerable and engaging, while Wright plays an excellent clown, enjoying his position of power over his “social superiors,” trying to make a buck, and even rousing up the rabble.
But the cast was also notable for the professional debut of the enchanting Monserrat Rodriguez, a sophomore at SMU. She was alternatingly creepy, sweet, deceitful, adorable, resentful, conniving, innocent, and implacable—accomplishing all with seemingly effortless panache and grace (though I’m sure the effort was considerable). I look forward to seeing her again.
This is a play about living with death, and with differences of class. Intentionally, I suspect, it was occasionally difficult to decipher the exact words through the heavy accents of the lower-class characters, but it was always easy to understand their meaning. Four very different people, each with secrets and resentments, locked together against their will for a month, while death hovers around them in a time of existential peril. What could possibly go wrong?
WHEN: Through November 12
WHERE: Bryant Hall (Kalita Humphreys campus), 3400 Blackburn, Dallas
