Review: “Bounds” and “I Want a Country”
| Location | 2525 Michigan Ave., Building T1, Santa Monica, CA 90404 |
| Theater | City Garage at Bergamot Station |
| Date of Performance | February 7, 2025 and February 9, 2025 |
| Language(s) | English (translated from Italian and Greek, respectively) |
| Photos by | Paul M. Rubenstein |
Reviewed by Allie Rigby
Where do you go when your country has dissolved or fallen apart? What opportunities and purgatories await displaced people who have risked everything for a chance at a better life?
This weekend, two plays opened at City Garage Theatre, both with painfully relevant themes exploring what it means to leave one country forever–or consider leaving it–only to land in a disorienting, dangerous place where arriving becomes an impossible feat.
In this production of Bounds by playwright Tino Caspanello from Italy, and translated by Haun Saussy, five women in matching black outfits command the stage, collectively passing the time on the beach with conversation, dancing, fights, and childlike games with high stakes. The play opens with Woman 1 (Lenka Janischova Shockley) kneeling center stage, wishing for the comfort of a chair, which we later learn she does not have because she lost the most recent round of musical chairs.
Shockley delivers in this role, with her character often challenging the social hierarchy established in this liminal place, with its pecking order led by Woman A (Angela Beyer), and loosely reaffirmed by Woman C (Devin Davis-Lorton) and Woman B (Alyssa Frey). Meanwhile, Woman 2 (Alyssa Ross) seems aware that like Woman 1, her status among the group is not secure, and she may be the one sent back home.
Janischova Shockley, and Alyssa Frey. Photo credit:
Paul M. Rubenstein.
Rules keep the group in some order and also help pass the time. By the end of the play, it remains unclear who will be sent back home, or if any of them will be allowed to enter this new country. All we know is that they are tired and they have been waiting for a long time to arrive.
Directed by Frédérique Michel and produced by Charles A. Duncombe, Bounds succeeds in conveying the uncertainty and fear that the five displaced women share, despite their differences in personality, status, dreams, and beliefs. Duncombe also achieves an uncertain, ominous atmosphere with his choice of rumbling, surveillance-type sounds (ie., helicopters hovering) that grow especially loud in the final scene, where these women await their fate in this new country.
The ending in I Want a Country is similar in that it is also ambiguous, but in a way that is more satisfying because the characters never left their “dead” country to begin with. The despondent, anticlimactic ending conveys the hopelessness of staying in a country where life has been sucked out of it. Written by playwright Andreas Flourakis from Greece during the financial crisis of 2010, and translated by Eleni Drivas, I Want a Country conveys the impossibility of shaping a new nation by consensus or democracy.
Duncan, Alyssa Ross, Liam Galaz Howard, Shane Weikel,
Angela Beyer. Front: Daniel Strausman, Alyssa Frey, Angela
Beyer. Photo credit: Paul M. Rubenstein.
Throughout the play (also directed by Frédérique Michel and produced by Charles A. Duncombe), characters pop umbrellas to weather storms, support their partner, and carry on, but they cannot agree on much, including where to go, how a country should operate, who to welcome, who to exclude, how to make and share money, etc. A lack of money and lack of imagination are part of the problem:, the group struggles to describe a new, ideal country that does not reproduce the same ills they seek to flee.
Director Frédérique Michel adds gorgeous moments of pause, where characters freeze while doing menial tasks like tying their shoes or walking arm in arm. These glitchy, staccato moments, coupled with sequences when the characters walk backward rather than forwards, solidify a place where time is slightly warped and characters are stuck with indecision around where to go and how to make the next place better. Duncombe’s use of a didgeridoo as part of the sonic atmosphere adds a heavy, pulsating layer to these sequences where the characters are stuck in limbo.
Perhaps most memorable is Papa Escargot (Andy Kallok) whose feelings of hopelessness are palpable beginning from the moment he enters the stage, stumbles upon a pair of discarded shoes, and slumps over, exhausted, sitting on his suitcase.
Photo credit: Paul M. Rubenstein.
There are also fantastic lines throughout, such as when Storm (Daniel Strausman) gets frustrated at the group’s return to money as the solution to all their problems, saying:
STORM: “Come on guys, we’re talking about doing something revolutionary, and again the conversation goes back to money.”
TOMY: “It’s hard not to.”
LONELY: “Force of habit.”
TOMY: “We don’t just need a new country — we need a new way of thinking.”
This new way of thinking may still be what we need here in the United States too. Both of these plays are timely, especially amidst the rising threats of mass deportations of immigrants, unreasonable searches and incarcerations, and increasingly militarized borders.
Once again, and per their thirty-five year record, City Garage Theatre has produced plays that speak to the times and encourage people to have empathy and compassion for what it means to arrive in a country that may pummel you into the ground.
As Woman 1 says in Bounds,
“This whole thing is . . . inhuman.”
The plays will run in repertory, with Bounds Thursdays and Fridays, and I Want a Country on Saturdays and Sundays until March 16.
Allie Rigby is a poet, editor, and reviewer with roots in Orange County, California. She is the author of Moonscape for a Child (Bored Wolves, 2024) and the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Romania, where she taught creative writing at Universitatea Ovidius din Constanța. She holds a master’s degree in English: Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She enjoys connecting with people to develop and share stories that generate cross-cultural dialogue, solidarity, and change. For more of her work and upcoming events, visit www.allierigby.com or @allie.j.rigby.
SUPPORT SEEFEST
Not a member yet? Become an art patron with other SEEfest arthouse aficionados in support of great events and programs, as well as our mission to keep you informed about initiatives from our wide network of fellow cultural organizations.
We Welcome YOU!