This fourth play by James Still developed by Geva Theater from staged readings through full production is his most appealing. A fairly straightforward drama about a small-town Midwestern family, Iron Kisses offers little innovative except that all characters are played first by a male actor, then by a female actor, and then the two together. But Still's warm, familiar picture of parental and sibling love, difficulties and development is exquisitely composed and ultimately genuinely moving.
Scene 1: "Iron Kisses" is a monologue requiring the actor to make clear with gestures and intonation alone that he is playing the father or mother or son, Billy, reminiscing about their learning to deal with Billy's homosexuality and acting out his growth from withdrawn boyhood to marriage to another man in San Francisco.
Scene 2: "The Long Division of My Mother" is similarly played by the actress alone onstage, showing the sharp conflicts between the mother and her daughter Barbara (not even mentioned in the first section) and their interaction with the father and son. It moves the story forward to the wedding in San Francisco and the daughter's earlier wedding and birth and nurture of her two children. The mother's recollection of her son and daughter clinging to each other and weeping at Barbara's marriage, as if in recognition that it signaled the end of their childhood, prepares us for the intensity of Billy and Barbara's relationship in Scene 3: "Happiness Is What You Can Bear."
Bringing the play to a kind of resolution and emotional closure, both actors here play brother and sister just after the unexpected death of their mother when Barbara, now divorced, is visiting Billy and his husband.
Geva's physical production is attractive, simple, but a little generic. Stephanie Gilman's direction is occasionally slow-paced but generally affecting and always clear about whom we are seeing and hearing these two actors portraying. Jacob Blumer brings unusual lively charm to his characters, but he hasn't a good lower vocal register, and his intonation is too much the same for the father and mother. With superior vocal technique, Mary Bacon does better with differentiating her males, females, adults and children. But Blumer and Bacon interact in the final section with wonderfully honest clarity and emotion.
I suppose that the concluding revelations of sibling conflicts and their special, intimate honesty of loving, shared secrets is something of a cliche. But Still has built this family's humorous frustrations with each other and ultimate acceptance of each other's divergent wills with such skill and eloquence that I found the drama insightful and even lovely.
