Review on NYTheatre.com!
Posted on August 20, 2008
The Golden Aurora
reviewed by Edward Elefterion
Aug 16, 2008
“Cassandra is a show dog, breed: Golden Aurora. Ned is an aimless young man currently working as a vet’s assistant. While on a walk together one afternoon, they fall in love. Of course, their affair has consequences. Ned’s boss feels betrayed and confused as to why he wants an animal instead of her. Ned’s mother utterly rejects him in favor of the greasy spoon that she runs, preferring to console her own aching heart by favoring intimacies with the various truckers who frequent her eatery over supporting her notorious son. Frank, Cassandra’s owner, interprets the bestial affair as a threat to his manhood, as if his prize dog was cheating on him with another man, which is more truth than metaphor. Frank was abusing Cassandra by beating her with a wet rope and masturbating in her face. Frank’s wife, Lynn, knows first-hand about Frank’s relationship to Cassandra: she used to be the primary “object of his desire,” and she still suffers from his wildly abusive alpha-male impulses when he feels the need to control her. She is as much his dog as Cassandra. And when she learns about Ned, when she sees how tormented her husband becomes over the affair, she quickly devises her own violent revenge.
Balancing this cruel world are equally universal emotions like those exemplified in the opening scene: Ned’s lonely-hearted neighbor grieves over her soon-to-be-euthanized pet as if it were her spouse. The depth of her suffering is clear and believable, the empty hours of her future stretch out before her and she invites Ned to rent a room in her now desolate home. Nancy McDoniel has to start the play on a tricky emotional pitch and she is instantly captivating as the grieving neighbor. I was sorry that she was only in a few scenes.
The acting in The Golden Aurora is top-notch all around. David Townsend is compelling and expresses Ned’s isolation and devotion with ease. Susan Hyon, as Joy, plays the lonely veterinarian as an outsider, the only one who can perhaps identify with Ned and attempt to understand his feelings. Joy feels underwritten and Hyon is clearly ready to sink her teeth into her relationship to Ned, but there is simply not enough there. As Frank, Patrick Melville is single-mindedly threatening and sad. Mary Rasmussen as his wife, Lynn, does a fine job with a difficult part: she is required to express the widest emotional range of all the characters in the play, and she rises to the challenge. Sharon O’Connell is both genuinely funny and disgraceful as Ned’s mother.”
“…the production is engaging and strong. It will certainly give you much to think about.”
Read the entire article here:
http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/fnyc08_rev.php?0=S&1=512
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
