There are about four uncomfortable instances in the dialogue of Apple to explain this play's seemingly unconnected title, including Evelyn's anxious warning to her husband, when he chews on her nipple, that it isn't an apple to bite on. That's uncomfortable because we know she fears that she has breast cancer. Nothing in the script ultimately turns out to be unconnected. And all the connections are uncomfortable.
Still, the funny thing about this play is that it is funny. And moving. And ultimately reassuring. The parts are more satisfying than the whole, but the conclusion is a kind of affirmation of the basic decency of the three characters and their loving regard for one another.
We begin with Evelyn's insufferable self-absorption as she worries about being one-upped by a co-worker and, when she finally allows her anguished husband, Andy, to blurt out that he has been fired after many years in a job he loved, reacts with annoyance at her inconvenience, not concern for his dismay. It is a marriage coming apart and possibly not viably originally joined. Therefore, Andy's finding a younger woman, Samantha, and becoming more involved in their casual sexual encounters seems inevitable. But when Evelyn finds out that she faces debilitating treatment for breast cancer, she must require Andy to take care of her. His hopeless attempts to find employment end with this new employment, and he finds strength no one would have suspected. Add the unlikely complications that the medical aide Evelyn has found is Samantha; the real-estate agent Samantha finds to sell her apartment is Evelyn; Samantha becomes less casual about her attraction to Andy; and, as Evelyn's condition deteriorates, Andy's love for her is reborn and more tenderly increased. No resolution is possible. Evelyn's death is touching, despite its inevitability. So we end with ambiguous kindly feelings all around.
Sound like a soap opera? It might be with less interesting components than Vern Thiessen's smart dialogue, Ken Gass' sharply focused direction, and the first rate acting of Kevin Hanchard as Andy, Nikki Landau as Samantha, and especially Sarah Orenstein's layered, commanding Evelyn. Hanchard has to narrate as well as move Andy from clumsy loser to likable lover to wonderfully gentle supporter. Coming out of her "other-woman" character and adopting a professional air, Landau has to deliver a series of lectures on cancer cells that provide only minimally appropriate connective tissue (pun regretted). But I wasn't entirely sold on the device of projecting stylized cells onto a scrim curtain during those mini-lecture interruptions; I thought them pretentiously distracting.
Otherwise, the production is very polished. Marian Wihak's spare set pieces neatly suggest Andy and Evelyn's apartment and Samantha's more handsome one overlooking the park where she meets Andy, as well as a hospital examining room, etc. -- all vastly helped by Kimberly Purtell's lighting. I liked Wayne Kelso's music too. But I left the theater more impressed with the parts -- these theater-artists' work -- than with the overall experience of the play.
