We all know - in light of the Virginia Tech shootings, we know it all too well - that violent acts can happen anywhere, at any time. Of course, we don't like to dwell on thoughts like that. If we did, we'd never leave the house. It's much like living with the fear of earthquakes. Sure, we know that there's a chance that, while we're careening down the freeway at 65 miles per hour, the road in front of us might instantly drop away. But we generally just ignore that possibility and get on with our lives. Otherwise, we'd let the fear overtake us.
Matt Pelfrey's world-premiere dark comedy, An Impending Rupture of the Belly, is the story of a man who lets the fear overtake him. Clay - the name surely is intentional, since the man allows himself to be molded by those around him - is at a turning point in his life. His wife Terri is pregnant with their first child, and he's trying to prepare for the baby. But, prodded by a friend who pontificates that we're one terrorist attack or natural disaster away from shooting each other over a loaf of Wonder Bread, Clay starts to really consider what it means to protect his family.
Terri wants none of it, and jokes with Clay that he can't save them from post-apocalyptic terrors if he can't even get the neighbor to stop his dog from crapping on their lawn. Clay, determined to prove himself a worthy husband and father, confronts the neighbor. Doug, an overgrown schoolyard bully who doesn't realize that Clay's entire identity is wrapped up in the issue, tells Clay to go jump.
And from that moment, An Impending Rupture of the Belly is unstoppable. You know it won't end well, that much is certain. But how bad it's going to get, and who is going to pay the price for Clay's determination not to feel powerless - these are the issues that keep you on edge for the duration of the play's single act.
Eric Pargac gives a memorable turn as the protagonist. While we see Clay fall apart at the seams and commit reprehensible acts, he still keeps Clay's desperately good intentions front and center. We never hate Clay; and the play only works because we can still see something of ourselves in him. Troy Metcalf is solid as Doug, the neighbor who refuses to curb his dog because he's sure Clay won't do anything about it. Also noteworthy is Shawn Lee as Clay's brother, a homeless drifter and wannabe rock star whom Clay won't even allow in his upper-middle-class house. (Or, as the props so eloquently display, he's the Pabst Blue Ribbon to Clay's Gordon Biersch.) And they're all under the expertly taut direction of Dámaso Rodriguez, who - aided by Christie Wright's evocative lighting design, Cricket S. Myers's effective sound design, and the cringe-inducing fight choreography of Brian Danner - never lets the tension drop.
The production is inches from perfection. Pelfrey's script contains a few lines that don't read true; and some of the set changes run a little long in the darkness of this black box theatre. But whether viewed as a study of a small dispute between two individuals gone horribly wrong, or as an allegory for events on a more global scale, An Impending Rupture of the Belly is a powerful piece, forcing you to look at things you'd rather not look at - and maybe even see them in a different way. And that's damn good theatre.
Los Angeles Times
Paranoia in unsure times
April 14, 2007
By F. Kathleen Foley
Recommended!
Playwright Matt Pelfrey plunges into the turbulent waters of suburban angst in "An Impending Rupture of the Belly," his world premiere play at Pasadena Playhouse's Carrie Hamilton Theatre.
Produced by the Furious Theatre Company, Pelfrey's comedy-drama revolves around Clay (Eric Pargac), a soon-to-be father whose paranoiac dread is wearing thin on his pregnant wife, Terri (Aubrey Saverino). Clay's idea of baby-proofing the house is putting a gun-slot in the front door so he can fire on the rampaging hordes after the collapse of Western civilization.
His fears are amplified by his boss and buddy Eugene (Doug Newell), an arch-conservative bigmouth who has little idea of how his extreme views are affecting his impressionable friend. When Clay's apparently menacing neighbor Doug (Troy Metcalf) refuses to clean up after his pooch, Clay's feelings of emasculation reach fever pitch. Clay turns to his crack-using musician brother Ray (Shawn Lee) for help, at which point, in a classic example of the butterfly effect, his tiny pile of a feud turns into a storm of human waste.
Dan Jenkins' appropriately totalitarian scenic design resembles cinder blocks, set off by metaphoric splashes of red. Christie Wright's minatory lighting and Cricket S. Myers' strident sound complete the striking picture of a Pasadena neigh-borhood as a suburban war zone.
Among the finely-tuned cast, Pargac stands out as a hapless everyman held hostage by his siege mentality. The male characters are effectively larger than life, and despite Saverino's best efforts, Terri remains an unfortunately capricious cipher. Despite that failing and an occasional detour into the obvious, Pelfrey's gripping, funny play is mounted with hilarious ferocity by director Dámaso Rodriguez, who captures the crippling anxiety of uncertain times in a staging as droll as it is dire.
Back Stage West
April 11, 2007
By Les Spindle
Critic's Pick!
Matt Pelfrey's galvanizing black comedy resembles those nightmares that nag at one's psyche the following day -- too off-kilter to accept as reality, yet infused with imagery too haunting to dismiss. Spinning a tragicomic fable of paranoia and violence in suburban America, this powerful new play might be thought of as an update to Jules Feiffer's Little Murders for the post-Sept. 11 terrorist age. Director Dámaso Rodriguez leads a superlative cast through a lightning-paced production that steadily progresses from hilarity to horror, as the tension escalates like an ever-tightening vise.
Clay (Eric Pargac) is an average-Joe family man in Pasadena; he and his wife, Terri (Aubrey Saverino), joyously anticipate the birth of their first child. Yet Clay is increasingly wary of the dangers of the modern age and is determined to protect his family -- fearing that if terrorists don't strike, natural disasters or flipped-out citizens will. Clay suffered through a road-rage attack on Sept. 11, 2006, and his pessimistic work supervisor (Doug Newell) drills thoughts of doomsday into his head. When a boorish neighbor (Troy Metcalf) disrespects Clay's property, the situation spins wildly out of control.
Rodriguez helms a seamless ensemble effort. Pargac finds the perfect balance between empathetic Everyman and foolhardy neurotic; his climactic character shift is bone-chilling. The superb Saverino provides the requisite voice of reason, though her character makes a fatal error of judgment. Shawn Lee elicits huge laughs as Clay's dope-dependent slacker brother, rationalizing his self-destructive lifestyle at every turn. Metcalf excels as the exasperating neighbor, and Newell is equally effective as a self-appointed moral compass for Clay who takes apparent delight in Clay's turmoil.
The milieu is spellbinding: the unnerving noises of honking horns and barking dogs emanating from Cricket S. Myers' fine soundtrack, the congested landscape of skeletal homes in Dan Jenkins' inspired scenic design, and the unnerving mood shifts in Christie Wright's fabulous lighting design. Powered by up-to-the-minute relevance, Furious Theatre Company's premiere staging of Pelfrey's thought-provoking work is mesmeric from the first moment to the last.
Variety
April 15, 2007
By Terry Morgan
The world premiere of Matt Pelfrey's dark comedy "An Impending Rupture of the Belly" is neither as offbeat nor as awkward as its title, which is a mixed blessing. The Furious Theater Company's production efficiently mines all of the humor and drama from the piece under Damaso Rodriguez's confident direction, and the outstanding cast delivers subtle, vibrant work. The play itself, however, while amusing, is also predictable, which makes the experience a trifle less memorable than it might be.
Young married couple Clay (Eric Pargac) and Terri (Aubrey Saverino) are expecting their first child. Clay is nervous about the responsibilities of impending fatherhood, and the litany of things to worry about (terrorism, riots, smallpox crop-dusters over Dodger Stadium) from his friend Adam (Doug Newell) doesn't help. Clay wants to turn his house into a fortress, but Terri suggests he start small by simply stopping their rude neighbor Doug (Troy Metcalf) from letting his dog defecate on their lawn every day. When Clay and Doug's confrontation does not go well, Clay spins out of control, lost among the paranoid terrors in his mind.
Pargac does a great job of making Clay sympathetic yet disturbing, so worried about not living up to a hyped concept of manliness that he loses sight of his decency. Saverino brings a tart authority to her role, a woman who's mostly horrified at what her husband is becoming, yet who also partly pushed him down that road. Metcalf is terrific as the amiably malevolent Doug, heedlessly stoking the fires of Clay's mania, and Newell is incisively funny in a couple of roles. Shawn Lee, however, steals the show with his hilarious, supercharged perf as Clay's rampaging brother Ray, a thoroughly realized creation that recalls some of Nicolas Cage's more outre characters.
Although the plot of "Belly" seems a little familiar, Pelfrey has a gift for oddball concepts and sardonic dialogue, as when Ray dismisses his life as "follow your dreams and end up in downtown L.A. with no pants." Rodriguez enhances the show with clever staging, such as an open doorway standing in as a bed, and brings an appropriately nightmarish intensity to the "dogs of war" sequence. No one is credited for the choice of music that roars between each scene, but the use of such bands as Fear and Morphine to create a jarring, dissonant vibe is bluntly effective. Dan Jenkins' set, a series of empty skyscrapers placed one in front of the other, seems unrelated to the show, which is mainly set in suburban Pasadena.
LA Weekly
April 9, 2007
By Steven Mikulan
Recommended! GO!
Capsule review
A man with a 9-iron and fear in his soul is a force to reckon with in Matt Pelfrey’s jaundiced fable about suburban paranoia. Clay (Eric Pargac) has some assertiveness issues when it comes to standing up to a neighborhood lout (Troy Metcalf) who allows his dog to relieve itself on Clay’s lawn. Egged on by an armchair Rambo at work (Doug Newell), ridiculed by his homeless brother (Shawn Lee) and, at a few critical moments, undermined by his own pregnant wife (Aubrey Saverino), Clay finally screws up his courage to act. His deeds, however, unleash disaster and ruin. Dámaso Rodriguez tautly directs a fine cast that performs against scenic designer Dan Jenkins’ wafflelike cutouts of high-rises.
Feature review
(the following is the second half a longer feature review that included another production)
...No such class insularity, however, protects the yuppie characters of another bourgeois-panic satire, Matt Pelfrey’s An Impending Rupture of the Belly. (The Furious Theatre Company world premiere is currently on view at the Carrie Hamilton Theatre.)
This 90-minute one-act is all about the breaching of the suburban moat and relentlessly plays on middle-class fears. Clay (Eric Pargac) lives with his pregnant wife, Terri (Aubrey Saverino), in Pasadena. At home he’s mild-mannered and accommodating to a fault — he cannot bring himself to confront a neighborhood lout (Troy Metcalf) whose dog regularly craps on the couple’s lawn. Nor does he attempt to overcome Terri’s objections to his homeless brother, Ray (Shawn Lee), who is a member of a Kiss tribute band named Scrotus and who dismisses Clay for belonging to the “mortgage gulag.”
At work, however, Clay is subjected to the Rush-and-Bush chauvinism of a colleague, Eugene (Doug Newell), who predicts an impending apocalypse of riot, earthquake and ruin. This armchair Rambo persuades Clay to view his home as a kind of fortified Green Zone surrounded by hostile forces — it’s not enough that Clay be the king of his castle, he must also be his suburban jungle’s lord of the flies. “There are hairline fractures everywhere,” Clay warns, parroting Eugene’s opinion of American society.
Egged on by Eugene, Clay eventually confronts lout and dog with his 9-iron. With one swing, he sends his own world spinning irrevocably out of control. While not as mature a work as David Mamet’s Edmond, Pelfrey’s story similarly exploits the notion of an over-civilized Homo lexus who momentarily summons primitive energy to strike back at perceived tormentors. The twist here is that Clay’s perceptions are unerringly false and that, at a few critical junctures, Terri is just unsupportive enough to send Clay kicking off in dangerous directions.
What makes Belly a worthy entry into the Falling Down genre is that Clay is not so thoroughly pathetic as his decisions may indicate. There’s no question that he’s being bullied, and in such a way that he would seem weak to call the police or a lawyer in to deal with his neighbor. Nor are his fears of spending time in jail or losing his class security unfounded — he has only to look at Ray to remember what happens to people who stumble in life and take too long getting back up. Finally, his main motive — to protect Terri and her unborn child — is unimpeachable. In the end, it’s how much Clay allows his fear of outsiders to inflect his actions that makes him such a sad character — and a lesson for the rest of us.
Director Dámaso Rodriguez tautly directs a cast that is completely in tune with Pelfrey’s unsparing vision. (Lee is deliciously over the top as the crack-smoking Ray, who sees himself as a kind of graceful predator prowling the asphalt savanna of Skid Row.) Scenic designer Dan Jenkins’ waffle-board cutouts of city buildings, Cricket Myers’ thunderous sound design and Christie Wright’s ominous lighting all combine to create a diorama of dread.
“It felt like I was a part of something bigger,” Clay marvels as he describes his fateful golf swing and the pain it unleashed. The truly creepy thing is that Pelfrey doesn’t suggest whether Clay is outside society or if the rest of us will have to catch up to Clay — which may be the highest tribute yet to mad chic.
