Lee Blessing's one-act play, Down the Road, exploring the ethical interplay of the news media the writers and publishers, the readers, the violent subjects gets a relatively tepid production by Alliance Theater Lab in its Miami Lakes storefront. The production comes alive, though, when Daniel Lugo, playing an imprisoned rapist and serial killer, toys with the husband-and-wife reporters who have a book contract for his story. They're interviewing him for the details of his crimes. He enjoys the telling. Do they? And will he tell all for their tell-all book? "Bill, we're here to facilitate your book," says Dan. "This is your book, Bill," says Iris.
A case can be made for rendering the relatively inexperienced reporters in a low-key fashion, but Margie Elias Eisenberg and Christopher Kauffmann as Iris (she's interviewed murderers before, but never a serial killer) and Dan (he used to work for a business magazine) generally fail to resonate.
Costuming might have helped. The characters' looks are pretty much unchanged despite their weeks in a small-town motel room down the road from the prison, where they hear the specifics of the violence he's committed.
As killer Bill Reach, Lugo has no such costume concerns; he's dressed in orange jumper throughout but seethes and colors with anger as the alternately fawning, reluctant reporters struggle with tactics, careerism and personal revulsion.
Director Rachel Finley writes in a program note that she first encountered Blessing's 1989 play in high school after the Columbine High School killings and finds new resonance today with the publication of O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" version of the murders of his wife and her friend. Perhaps the issues have been so freshly debated that personal passion for the piece somehow doesn't quite make it to the performance place.
