News
Amid Boston Overdose Crisis, a Pair of Harvard Students Are Bringing Narcan to the Red Line
News
At First Cambridge City Council Election Forum, Candidates Clash Over Building Emissions
News
Harvard’s Updated Sustainability Plan Garners Optimistic Responses from Student Climate Activists
News
‘Sunroof’ Singer Nicky Youre Lights Up Harvard Yard at Crimson Jam
News
‘The Architect of the Whole Plan’: Harvard Law Graduate Ken Chesebro’s Path to Jan. 6
A little space, a little time and a little fun add up to make "Soup of the Day" a harmless, lightly amusing student production. A one-act play written and directed by Barbara M. Matteau, a masters candidate in Theater-Arts, "Soup" examines life's choices and familiar parent-child conflicts that can reveal them.
The play opens with Daisy (Jennifer M. Iacono, a Princeton graduate and Belmont resident), a light-headed waitress who talks of hearing voices and has a paranoia of strangers. She begins by describes a life-altering dream that compelled her to become a painter. Regardless of how unstable her life may be, Daisy is determined to keep on painting until she gets it right. Having one clear goal in a sea of unpredictablity becomes a theme throughout the rest of the play. After Daisy's monologue, a customer named Jane (Dani D. Krasner '97) and her daughter Azalea (Phoebe Search '00) enter for lunch--the first time they've spent together in a long while. From the start, the tension between them is evident, and the immediate familiarity of the characters and their conflict is perhaps the most effective aspect of the play.
Jane is a plain, spinster-like divorcee, brimming with outwardly cheerful criticisms of her daughter's college antics that fail to show her daughter that she does in fact care about her welfare. Her verbal shots are accompanied by jerky, robotic gestures that reveal an underlying tension but are somewhat artificial and unconvincing. Azalea is the flowering know-it-all. Stubborn and unreceptive to motherly advice, she snaps defensively in response to every comment. She is a liberated student who savors the right to drink a glass of wine at lunch, if only for the shock value it has in startling her mother. She has become a vegetarian who protests for animal rights and bewails the meaninglessness of grades. She has changed her major and her boyfriend more times than she can count, much to her mother's chagrin. But Jane has also changed since the two last saw each other. She has a boyfriend, her supervisor at work, who happens to be coming to lunch. As much as she complains about not knowing what her daughter is doing, Jane hasn't given Azalea the full story on her life to-date either. Yet ironically, each complains that the other doesn't express enough interest in her particular "soup of the day."
As for Clive, the bland boyfriend (Les Welter, an MFA candidate in theater arts), he helps the conflict roll along, siding with the daughter only to fall to her wrath later for inquiring about personal details. His character seems entirely superfluous, and does not really contribute to the development of the play.
The mother versus daughter motif continues until a crucial fact suddenly comes to light that bridges the conflict and brings the two to reconciliation. It becomes apparent that Azalea resembles her mother as she was at that age: impulsive, free-spirited and committed to one thing despite all the uncertainty of youth. For Azalea at this point, it is discovering herself. For Jane, it was motherhood. Their dialogue usually seems genuine, though occasional lapses in acting quality compromise the exchange's spontaneity.
The resolution of the play comes as something of a surprise. After developing the conflict for 45 minutes, everything magically comes together in the last five minutes of the play. This abrupt resolution robs the play of any real climax: the rising action gives way to immediate resolution. And if the lights don't go down to let you know the play is over, you might end up sitting there, waiting to be told that everything is finished.
The names, costumes and mannerisms help to reveal character, superficial and predictable though those characters are. The Kronauer Space, an intimate, black-box style theater that seats about 30, is appropriate to this style of one-on-one theater, allowing for occasional eye contact between audience and actors. Because of the nature of the theater, the set is sparse but sufficient to meet the few demands made on setting and reality by this play.
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.