The "Mind" is a powerful thing

It’s a full moon, visible clearly through the clouds. Below it is a southern style living room and a hospital bed. This is the most calming atmosphere the audience of Sam Shepard’s  “A Lie of the Mind” got to experience before the night broke out into arguments, hysteria, mature subject matter and fire, only broken apart by awkward silences and laughter.
“A Lie of the Mind” played in the Main Theatre at the Redfern Arts Center March 3 through 6 and was directed by adjunct professor Vaughn West.

The play began with a cloudy night sky watching two men argue via pay phone. Frankie, played by senior Jordan Mitchell-Love, continues to scream into the phone at his brother Jake, played by freshman Will Adams, as he tries to keep Jake on the line while his hysterical brother panics over what’s happened previously.

This sets the tone for the rest of the play, which continues on with exponentially more yelling, arguing and people who won’t listen to reason and are instead submersed in their own delusions.

Jake assaulted his wife and convinced himself she’s dead. The play follows his wife Beth, played by sophomore Allison Lee Relihan, in her recuperation, assisted by her brother Mike, played by sophomore Ryan Ouellette, their father Baylor, sophomore Tyler Gammans and their mother Meg, freshman Rebecca Holtz. The plot also follows Jake in his grief-wrought insanity while his mother Lorraine, performed by senior Hayley Duyon and his sister Sally, by freshman Kimberly Sollows, try to nurse him back to a better state of mind. Meanwhile, Frankie seeks to find out if Beth has truly perished but soon finds more than he’s bargained for. But the play wasn’t without humor. Beth and Meg in particular acted as the comedic relief characters and kept the audience laughing throughout the play.

The brand of humor took only a few lines but had the audience in stitches. In one scene, Meg said, “Stop screaming, the walls can’t take it!”

In a performance with so much anger, it’s no surprise the cast took advantage of these lines to escape the tension. Vaughn West directed the show. West has directed for 22 years and has put on six productions at Keene State College. Outside of directing, West is an adjunct faculty member for the theatre and dance department. West said he thinks Sam Shepard is one of the most important playwrights of the last part of the twentieth century.
“I think it’s material that every student actor, designer and audience should know about,” West said.

Junior Jacob Wojtkowski saw the performance as a requirement for his theatre class and said he was thrown off by the ending.

“I wasn’t really sure what happened,” Wojtkowski said. “I thought it was a really good play but then all of a sudden the ending kind of left a lot out.”
West saw this as a trend for Shepard. He explained the beginnings of Shepard’s plays are exciting and the endings are often disastrous.

“Part of Shepard is that there are no easy resolutions,” West said. “That’s his point.”
Molly McMillan is a member of the Edge Ensemble Theatre Company and is just one of many who experienced Shepard’s uneasy resolutions. McMillan is familiar with the theatre scene and saw the play with her friend Kim Dupuis, a theatre and dance professor at KSC.
“I like Sam Shepard’s work,” McMillan said.

She said she has seen works of Shepard’s but hasn’t seen “A Lie of the Mind” until this performance.

“He’s pretty gutsy and pretty raw. That’s something I like about him,” McMillan said.
She said she wasn’t surprised in the end of the first act when Beth removed her upper clothing, revealing her back side to the audience and a bit more to the audience seated to the far right. McMillan had also looked forward to seeing the pyrotechnic effect later in the play used when Lorraine and Sally set fire to their home.

Gammans, who played Baylor, said he thought the title “A Lie of the Mind” represented how people can be held hostage to their own delusions.

“Our focus sort of determines our reality,” Gammans said. “It’s amazing how we can walk through life with blinders on.”

West said he feels there’s one line in the play which accurately describes the entire performance, spoken from Mike to Beth.

“You’re going to believe what you want to believe anyway; what do you want to believe?”
 
Garrett Beltis can be contacted at gbeltis@keeneequinox.com.