June is in the late stages of breast cancer, having had an unsuccessful mastectomy and several rounds of chemotherapy.
Her prognosis is grim; yet it is her friends who experience the most difficulty in coming to grips with her mortality.
Bryony Lavery’s “Last Easter,” staged by the USM department of theatre and directed by theatre faculty member Thomas A. Power, is the story of June (Michele Lee) and her three closest friends: Leah (Megan Leddy), a straightlaced American ex-pat; Joy (Kate Caouette), a gravel voiced lush; and Gash (Derrick Jaques), a drag queen.
Gash in particular displays the most pronounced craving for diversion, whether it be anonymous sex or desperate attempts at humor.
The play is book-ended by the corny jokes that Gash tells; tired little Vaudevillian set-up-and-punchline groaners, which the viewer imagines Gash has culled from his drag show.
The jokes that the Gash character tells create a framing device for “Last Easter”; they are the flimsy artifice that separates the play’s glib, privileged characters from the grim reality of their friend’s declaration of defeat after a long battle with cancer.
All of the cast do solid physical work; Lee and Jaques in particular craft compelling physical performances.
Lee displays June’s unflagging stoicism and incremental bodily decline in every movement she makes onstage; as her character gets sicker, she shrinks in stature; the audience really believes that she is both dying and coming to terms with her death.
Jaques, sinewy and lithe, has a commanding stage presence as the melodramatic Gash. Leddy does a nice job in a relatively thankless role as Leah, the most earnest of the group of friends, and Couette has moments when she wields a bottle and intones snide witticisms as if she’s channeling Mae West.
It is in the second act, when matters become a great deal more serious, that some cracks in the performers’ facades begin to show.
“Last Easter” is as much a play about denial as it is about mortality, and there are scenes in which Couette and Jaques seem to drop their guards a bit too readily; in certain moments, they are definitely “playing” sad.
This causes the production to become slightly heavy-handed in parts; a major mistake when staging a play with such downbeat subject matter.
However, when Gash and Joy are confronted with the prospect of acting as June’s euthanizers, both actors ultimately get back on track. Their mixture of flippancy and genuine love and concern regains equilibrium, and they are able to come to terms with their given roles, even as they flit about and frantically manufacture scenarios far more dramatic than the ones that actually transpire at the play’s end.
“Last Easter” boasts a particularly impressive set, designed by junior Bobby Wilcox, with giant bay windows and raised platforms that allow the players and director to utilize a large percentage of the mainstage.
Not an inch of visual space is wasted, and the way in which June’s modest apartment is nestled into a small space downstage left creates an effective visual metaphor. Like the character herself, who quietly ponders the ramifications of her fate while her friends cavort and bluster and gnash their teeth, June’s flat is unassuming — a simple set of desk, chairs and a lighting board — lost among its bombastic surroundings.
If you missed it, you missed it: “Last Easter” closed Sunday April 27. The theater department will resume its regular production schedule next fall.