War dance on the brink of the abyss

By GREG DIXON

The scene is a bar in the Bronx. Danny, a paranoid truck driver nicknamed "The Beast", broods alone over a beer. At another table Roberta, a messed-up mother of a teenager, sits solo-drinking too. They begin arguing over nothing, then confessing, and soon nothing is the same for them ever again ...

Yes, you can write the synopsis for American playwright John Patrick Shanley's Danny and the Deep Blue Sea - which opens tonight at the SiLo Theatre - in a matter of a few lines. You could, too, count its props on one hand and tally its cast with two fingers.

But to add up the demons on stage - from loneliness to fear to guilt - as Scott Wills and Sara Wiseman bring Danny and Roberta to life would, it seems, be a far more complex equation.

The first work of the SiLo's 2004 season is tough theatre driven by violence and passion and lives just short of the abyss.

Director Caroline Bell-Booth agrees there is no shortage of issues for these two depressed, probably borderline psychotic, loners.

"But really, it's a love story. What draws me to it as a play is that, in these ridiculously hard times [for these characters], where you assume there is no hope at all, this little flower blooms. These two people make this huge choice, at huge risk, to love each other and create this little thing of beauty in this horrible cityscape of harshness and depravity."

Tough times in a tough place. Which makes it curious then that it comes from Shanley, whose best-known work is the script for the film Moonstruck, a light romantic comedy which won female lead Cher an Oscar. But despite the confronting, rib-punching drama of Danny and the froth of Moonstruck, Bell-Booth sees similarities between the play and Shanley's Hollywood hit.

"A lot of Shanley's work is based around that area of the Bronx and its Italian families. And also they're just love stories. So at heart I think they're the same kind of story."

The play is subtitled "An Apache Dance", indicating a violent confrontation between two people.

"These two characters spar with each other all the time," says Bell-Booth. "And what I particularly love about Roberta is that she's tough enough to be an opponent of this big beast of a man, Danny. And in a similar way he is tender and loving enough to comfort this utterly broken woman. It influences the whole rhythm of the piece.

"They spar, there are literally explosions between them and with that they are equal opponents. There's this tussle but they drop away as well. I love working with that."

All of which makes Danny, Wiseman says, an actors' piece - but then many two-handers are. "They're quite daunting. You're thinking they can either look at him or they can look at me," she says, laughing. "I love working through the process [of the two-hander] because it is so intimate in respect of you bringing yourself to the rehearsal space and that takes a lot of trust and a lot of commitment and a lot of courage.

"When you get it right, you have that level of sharing and you discover the place the script can take you as a person and as an actor. The play is very dear to me, the characters and the story. It's very challenging, emotionally demanding."

Says Wills: "I think it's very reflective of what we should be and what we can be as humans. It's a very human piece."

And even if Danny and Roberta do confront incest and the near killing of someone, everyone experiences extremes in their lives, Wills believes.

"Maybe nowhere near as heightened, but we've all had sexual problems and scrapes or relationship problems or thinking, 'Is it all worth it? I'm right at the edge, man, I'm right at the edge. How can I do this any more?' And then someone comes along and something happens and you go, 'Yeah, that's what it's supposed to be about'."

On stage

* What: Danny and the Deep Blue Sea

* Where, when: SiLo Theatre, Feb 4-24