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[Theater reviews]

Modern morals
Coyote’s Sin is anything but deadly

BY ANNE MARIE DONAHUE

SIN
BY WENDY MACLEOD. DIRECTED BY COURTNEY ANNE O’CONNOR. SET DESIGN BY RICK VANZINI. LIGHTING BY CHRIS AKINS. COSTUMES BY KRISTIN GLANS. ORIGINAL MUSIC AND SOUND BY J. HAGENBUCKLE. WITH LAURA LATREILLE, JOHN CAROZZA, BILL MOOTOS, ELLEN STONE, AND SHAWN STURNICK. PRESENTED BY COYOTE THEATRE AT THE BOSTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS, THURSDAY THROUGH SUNDAY THROUGH FEBRUARY 10.

How the hell can Sin be original? In form, Wendy MacLeod’s modern-day morality play is yanked out of the 15th century and set down in 1989. The Middle Ages also seep into the story, in which Good vies with Evil. But despite the borrowed trappings of a mustier time, Sin is decidedly original — a seductive if imperfect mix of soul, wicked wit, and inspired wackiness. Blessed be Coyote Theatre for bringing MacLeod’s cracked gem to town for its long-overdue New England premiere, six years after it debuted in Chicago.

The themes and conventions imported from the 15th century are introduced in the early scenes, but they start to mutate in the first act and fade to wispy shadows in the second. In the lyrical, ludicrous opening monologue, Sin’s protagonist, an airborne traffic reporter named Avery who’s subbing for the medieval Everyman, looks down from the sky and pities all the earthbound miscreants below. Why, she wonders, can’t they “just stop being bad and start being good?” Then, as a flesh-fettered soul in a classic morality play might, she faces earthlings who incarnate each of the Seven Deadly Sins: Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Pride, and Lust.

But as the play progresses, the Deadly Seven increasingly look less like avatars of evil than like ordinary people with problems. When Avery finds that she can’t reform her estranged alcoholic husband and her junk-food-junkie roommate, she lashes out, often cruelly. Indeed, she remains mulishly blind to the hate and hurt she inflicts with lofty intent until, at the very moment an earthquake hits, her AIDS-afflicted brother suddenly dies, interrupting her nasty indictment of his vanity and wanton sex life. With his last words, he gives her apt advice. “You better lower your standards, girl. Sin a little. It’s more fun. It’s less lonely.” In the second act, a comedy of disasters, Avery comes to realize how right her brother was.

Set in San Francisco, the play rattles, erupts, and winds down in synch with the earthquake of 1989. Like the jittery city itself, the plot is fractured and laced with faults. Time lags and lurches, the momentum is a mess of fits and starts, and sense plays second fiddle to serendipity.

At times, Sin’s chaos is irksome. If you give into it, however, the trippy feel is fun. And MacLeod’s play offers more than a good time. Between the laughs, Sin slips in some simple but important truths that tend to be overlooked, ignored, or forgotten in our jaded times. Maybe cynicism has become so chic and socially accepted that we brush off ideas about ethics reflexively, as we would an ugly bug. Or it could be that all the sanctimonious hypocrites who trail their slime through our churches and halls of government have given ethics a bad name. In any case, Sin reminds us that virtue is more than the condemnation of vice, that good and evil are relative terms, and that decency is a matter of personal definition and needs no sanction from church or state.

It’s a testament to director Courtney Anne O’Connor’s discernment that the Coyote production avoids so many of Sin’s sandtraps while balancing the comic and the serious with such grace. All five actors shine, none more consistently than Laura Latreille in the role of Avery. In every scene (and she is in every one), Latreille is so poised and natural that anyone who hadn’t seen her in other roles might suspect she was just playing herself, very well. Apart from 30 more pounds, Ellen Stone has everything she needs to fill the role of the ravenous roommate. And it’s hard to cast stones at any of Sin’s men: Bill Mootos, Shawn Sturnick, and John Carozza are ace actors. But in this production, each is saddled with two roles, and each, probably in an effort to keep the distinction sharp, overplays one of his characters. Surely any actor on stage with the likes of Latreille can risk erring on the side of understatement.

How the hell can Sin be original? In form, Wendy MacLeod’s modern-day morality play is yanked out of the 15th century and set down in 1989. The Middle Ages also seep into the story, in which Good vies with Evil. But despite the borrowed trappings of a mustier time, Sin is decidedly original — a seductive if imperfect mix of soul, wicked wit, and inspired wackiness. Blessed be Coyote Theatre for bringing MacLeod’s cracked gem to town for its long-overdue New England premiere, six years after it debuted in Chicago.

The themes and conventions imported from the 15th century are introduced in the early scenes, but they start to mutate in the first act and fade to wispy shadows in the second. In the lyrical, ludicrous opening monologue, Sin’s protagonist, an airborne traffic reporter named Avery who’s subbing for the medieval Everyman, looks down from the sky and pities all the earthbound miscreants below. Why, she wonders, can’t they “just stop being bad and start being good?” Then, as a flesh-fettered soul in a classic morality play might, she faces earthlings who incarnate each of the Seven Deadly Sins: Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Pride, and Lust.

But as the play progresses, the Deadly Seven increasingly look less like avatars of evil than like ordinary people with problems. When Avery finds that she can’t reform her estranged alcoholic husband and her junk-food-junkie roommate, she lashes out, often cruelly. Indeed, she remains mulishly blind to the hate and hurt she inflicts with lofty intent until, at the very moment an earthquake hits, her AIDS-afflicted brother suddenly dies, interrupting her nasty indictment of his vanity and wanton sex life. With his last words, he gives her apt advice. “You better lower your standards, girl. Sin a little. It’s more fun. It’s less lonely.” In the second act, a comedy of disasters, Avery comes to realize how right her brother was.

Set in San Francisco, the play rattles, erupts, and winds down in synch with the earthquake of 1989. Like the jittery city itself, the plot is fractured and laced with faults. Time lags and lurches, the momentum is a mess of fits and starts, and sense plays second fiddle to serendipity.

At times, Sin’s chaos is irksome. If you give into it, however, the trippy feel is fun. And MacLeod’s play offers more than a good time. Between the laughs, Sin slips in some simple but important truths that tend to be overlooked, ignored, or forgotten in our jaded times. Maybe cynicism has become so chic and socially accepted that we brush off ideas about ethics reflexively, as we would an ugly bug. Or it could be that all the sanctimonious hypocrites who trail their slime through our churches and halls of government have given ethics a bad name. In any case, Sin reminds us that virtue is more than the condemnation of vice, that good and evil are relative terms, and that decency is a matter of personal definition and needs no sanction from church or state.

It’s a testament to director Courtney Anne O’Connor’s discernment that the Coyote production avoids so many of Sin’s sandtraps while balancing the comic and the serious with such grace. All five actors shine, none more consistently than Laura Latreille in the role of Avery. In every scene (and she is in every one), Latreille is so poised and natural that anyone who hadn’t seen her in other roles might suspect she was just playing herself, very well. Apart from 30 more pounds, Ellen Stone has everything she needs to fill the role of the ravenous roommate. And it’s hard to cast stones at any of Sin’s men: Bill Mootos, Shawn Sturnick, and John Carozza are ace actors. But in this production, each is saddled with two roles, and each, probably in an effort to keep the distinction sharp, overplays one of his characters. Surely any actor on stage with the likes of Latreille can risk erring on the side of understatement.

 

 
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