WHERE Y'AT New Orleans Monthly Entertainment Magazine January, 2007

Bellbottom Blues


Bellbottoms and blow bring the ‘70s back to life in all of their awkward glory better than your Mom’s old 8mm ever could. That’s because Mom probably didn’t get The Sunken Living Room on film. Set so authentically in the ‘70s that you can practically feel the shag carpeting between your toes, playwright David Caudle and director Ryan Rilette have recreated an era. If you grew up in the ‘70s and did not know someone who had this kind of dysfunctional family, then it was probably your family.

“Of all the shows this year, this show is the one that feels the most like walking into a really great Off Broadway production,” boasts Rilette. The Sunken Living Room, by up and coming playwright David Caudle, was chosen from hundreds of submissions to win the Southern New Plays Festival in 2005 and was given the opportunity to be performed at Southern Repertory Theater. The play’s world premier was set to open in November 2005. Naturally, that couldn’t happen, so in those early months, just after the storm, while some people drank and some jogged, Rilette produced. “I felt like I had to find something to do with myself,” says Rilette, “so I just sunk all of my energy into this one production.” With the help of artistic director Rafael DeAcha at The New Theatre in Miami, Rilette was able to secure a rather serendipitous new venue for the play. Oddly, Caudle himself grew up in Miami, the play is set in Miami and the New Theatre had just gained a slot for a Miami-themed production when The Sunken Living Room lost its New Orleans home.

Perhaps the characters in The Sunken Living Room could be described as a bit displaced themselves. The drama, which is set in the ‘70s and includes period accents such as a carpet rake, a ‘70s soundtrack and of course, the titular architecture of the decade, centers primarily around Wade, a 16-year-old boy who has not yet come to grips with his sexuality. In the absence of his pilot father and his barely there mother, Wade is left to contend with his explosive, drug addicted older brother, Chip, and Chip’s sexually savvy girlfriend. The children’s mother, according to Caudle, “doesn’t really know that she is not being a good mother. She interacts very differently with each child but in the end her denial is no longer viable” and the family dynamic is forever changed.

Wade is vulnerable and diligent and he is the only character trying to keep the family together. He is not, however, the only homosexual character that Caudle has ever written. In fact, in his upcoming play Visiting Ours, the two main characters are lesbians. A unique aspect of his writing is that the drama does not pivot on the characters’ homosexuality. “I feel strongly about writing gay characters that are just gay,” avers Caudle. “Things are going on in the world, but they just happen to be gay.” In The Sunken Living Room, the distinction is subtle because while the audience is aware that Wade is gay, he doesn’t yet. Chip’s drug problem takes center stage, but it offers Wade the opportunity to be courageous in a way he never has before.

This is a drama that is also filled with humor – the kind of wince inducing humor only a family situation can afford. Rilette describes it as: “Incredibly funny. It’s the type of play that treads the line between comedy and drama. While you are laughing, you suddenly begin to realize things have become very dramatic.” KATIE KIDDER