Review of "Black Ice." THIS POST CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!
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June 23rd, 2013 at 9:51PM
I was asked to talk about "Black Ice" (The play Max Adler and Robert Gant did at the Young Playwright's Festival in LA.
By Rinn
June 23rd, 2013 at 9:51PM
It gets wordy, and has a serious amount of spoilers, as I give away the ending, but I hope it makes sense.
I'd give it a 14 out of 10, would see again, and again, and again.
The play itself opens up with Max in a chair, Robert at a desk, and it becomes apparent that they're having a counseling session of some sort, but the audience is left wondering how they came to be there, and why, since it slowly becomes obvious that Max (the characters were unnamed, so I'll just use the actor's names) doesn't want to be there, but is willing to talk with the counselor. Robert is sometimes angry, shouting in Max's face, while Max sometimes shouts back, confused and angry.
A story begins to unfold, background on the teenage boy, (Max) and his friend Quiet Wyatt, (a nickname given to him by his semi neglectful father,) who is referred to as "slow", "quiet", and "retarded", on separate occasions during the play.
Max explains that they were best friends, and describes his own sexual experiences/needs in excruciating detail, while the questions being thrown at him by Robert are sometimes revealing and sometimes purely awkward.
The long and short of it seems to be that Max's character is a troubled, lonely narcissist, who befriends a "simple" boy at his mother's behest, then falls in love with the way he feels when said boy compliments and adores him. Teenage boy explains that Wyatt was gay, and that while he himself wasn't gay, he felt like, as his friend, he should do what he could, so they have a sexual relationship, and when their families try to separate them, Max's character convinces Wyattto run away with him.
They leave, driving to New York City, where Max's character goes on auditions, (being an aspiring actor,) and leaves Wyatt in the car all day while he's gone. They get their food by stealing and/or begging, digging through trash, etc. After a while, they move north in NY, taking up residence in a burned out house, and when Max's character gets overwhelmed, he goes on a "trip" to clear his head and leaves Wyatt at the empty house. When he comes back, the friend is gone, and so he goes home.
He's going to be tried for kidnapping and stuff, so he goes and coerces Wyatt to leave with him again, (using promises of a sexual nature) and they leave.
Max's character decides that he needs to jerk off, so he switches places (letting him drive) so he can "take care of things" in the back seat.
It becomes apparent that Robert's character knows what happened next, but that Max's character has no memory of it, and the scene begins to come to an emotional peak, with screaming from both, and crying from Max, and Robert explains that they are in the afterlife, and that there was a car accident that killed both boys.
He says that they've been through the same "counseling session" over a hundred times, and that neither Max nor he could move on until Max's character admitted that what he did was wrong.
Max's character swears he's going to throw up and attempts to admit fault, but in the end is unable to.
You see the climax, and then suddenly the whole scene resets, and it's just as it was at the beginning, with them acting as if they've never met before, and the lights go dim.
The end.