In Scott Organ's sharp-witted Phoenix, the fourth full-length play in this year's 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville, its two characters, obviously though reluctantly made for each other, square off in a distinctly modern battle of the sexes, lobbing words akin to tennis balls that either hit their mark or fail to connect.
Bruce (Trey Lyford) and Sue (Suli Holum) met as stranger in the night at a bar in Portland, Oregon, where Sue, a traveling nurse whose assignments take her all over the country and the world, was visiting her mother. After
Several drinks they wound up in bed together. Both enjoyed the evening but passed it off as just a one-night stand.
The play begins four weeks later in a coffee shop where the two are meeting after Sue has called Bruce. She has three things to tell him: she likes
him, she can't see him anymore, and she's pregnant. Even though they like each other, they're agreed on not having a relationship.
People, it's said, sometimes rise from the ashes like a phoenix, a mythical firebird, to overcome a seemingly insurmountable setback. Organ's title conveys that, and it's reinforced by having another scene take place at an abortion clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, where Bruce goes, too, in a clumsy, unappreciated attempt "to be party to this thing that has happened."
Verbally tip-toeing awkwardly around each other as they get together again, they spend the night at Sue's motel after she feels bad that Bruce has to sleep in his car. The talk goes on and on and on. "What is it you hope to get out of life?," Bruce asks her. "because I'm having a hard time imagining what it could be."
"As few problems as possible," Sue tells him. "I want things to go smoothly. I don't want disappointments. I don't want to get my hopes up
I'm trying to save both of us from having to go through the annoyance and potential pain of an inevitably doomed relationship
It's doomed because I doom it."
And so to the abortion clinic where the verbal dueling incites an ugly, shattering outburst from Sue. Yet a cathartic final scene with Sue seeing Bruce at his Portland apartment hints at a hopeful course for their future.
Holum and Lyford appeared in Naomi Iizuka's site-specific Butchertown play called, At the Vanishing Point in the 2004 Humana Festival. The program doesn't mention that they are married in real life, which may account for the easy, accomplished Hepburn/Tracy way they play off each other in this brisk, diverting comedy/drama directed by Aaron Posner.
