Standing on My Knees: Falling Down

The Impression That I Get

by Jesse Schmitt

First impressions are everything. They can make or break the dynamic of a relationship before you have even been able to fully form an opinion of someone. So making a good first impression is vital for the continued success of personal relationships; if you just keep going around, stoking everyone you meet, you will have a hard time forging lasting bonds, partly because people will never know what to expect from you and partly because many people shut others out if their initial experience with you is a negative one.

It is the same for me whenever I see a theatre show; I am always careful to have a good look around the theatre space and get as acclimated with it as possible so that I can understand where we are picking up in the lives of these people. However if I am led astray from the get go then it is often difficult for me to orient myself.

Playwrights are notorious for picking up wherever they feel is a good place to start; when you’re viewing the work of a seasoned professional, you will get acclimated quickly. Think about a play like “All My Sons;” you’re introduced to Joe Keller on the porch steps and he seems like a fine upstanding pillar of the local community. On the surface the biggest problem seems to be that this family needs to begin coping with the fact that their son, who has been missing for three years from the war, is dead. However there are steamier things brewing in the Keller home; all of which are spun out for us, throughout.

From the beginning of the current Los Angeles production of “Standing On My Knees,” (1501 N Gardner St) by John Olive (set in 1982) we are introduced to what looks like a very meager existence. A desk, a couch and chair, a fold out bed, and a bookshelf to the rear; we learn rather quickly that the desk and the bed and the couch/chair combo are really three distinct places. But for now the play has not even begun; so all we are left with is these disparate elements and a girl sleeping on the bed, beneath a blanket.

This girl is Catherine (Meg Wallace). Catherine lay there still and stiff as a board when I first entered the theatre and every occasion I looked over to her, she never moved. I felt it could either be a great exertion from this talented actor or she was just tired or a practiced sleeper. In either event I prepared myself for a thrilling theatrical adventure.

In the press release the play is described for us this way: “Catherine is a beautiful, young poet with two published books to her credit and a publisher who believes in her talent. But Catherine is also a schizophrenic, tormented by all the noise of the many voices in her head. Her therapist prescribes an anti psychotic which quiets things down. A young stockbroker falls head over heels for Catherine and they begin a serious romance.”

From my understanding of this play, my glance at the cast list, and the fact that her picture is on the postcard, I’d gleaned from that, that Catherine was the woman in question who lay down before me. She didn’t even appear to be breathing. A quick surveillance of the area showed that there were four books on the desk; two of indeterminate authorship (which ended up being Catherine’s) and Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson.

Finally when the action began, we quickly begin to feel as though we are in a Pink Floyd album. “Dark Side of the Moon,” specifically as there is hammering and clanking (which I still, after seeing the play and investigating upstairs during intermission, couldn’t decide if it was intentional or just from another show upstairs; we are inside of a basement space). However the sound designer and director do a great job in shooting around the voices that are both spoken and recorded and making them hauntingly visceral.

Catherine is apparently just out from the hospital and is having a difficult time doing anything. She looks as though she were just from the hospital as her eyes are heavy set and her entire demeanor screams medication. But then again, so does her therapist, Joanne (Barbara Keegan). While the affection from Catherine could be called dependent, the performance from Joanne is so monotone and glib; you’d wonder what Tom Cruise might have to say about her. But I wasn’t in a therapists office at the beginning of the therapy revolution of the late 70’s which continues on into today. While Joanne was no “Dr. Phil” you wonder if her portrayal was commensurate with the times.

Catherine dresses in all black and often slips easily to and from her bed; she seems to get comfort from sleep. She meets with her publisher, Alice (Rachel Hardy), who may be slightly infatuated with more than her talents (we learn that the stack of books; Woolf and Dickinson with Catherine’s two sandwiched between; are, in fact, Alice’s; that’s pretty imposing company for any author) or it may just be that the audience is seeing the world through the eyes of Catherine. In any event, Alice is the one who introduces her to Robert (Brian Barth), the young stockbroker, at a party.

This is one of the places where I had a hard time buying the story. I dated a schizophrenic girl, seemingly in another life, for more than a year. She was crazy. But she was very passionate in every sense of the word. We loved hard, we fought hard; everything was hyper-real with her; even when she was on her meds. So the fact that Catherine was so…self aware had me a little confused. I just didn’t get that she even liked this guy. A couple of quotes, in the text I found a little far fetched “Head over heels in like;” when Catherine’s talking to Alice and “You best stay away from me; I’m poison,” when Catherine’s talking to Robert.

I guess I just don’t understand where all this restraint was coming from! It wasn’t the acting or even the directing but the mere existence of the words which had me puzzled. I know this play is more than 20 years old, has numerous productions, has maybe helped in the understanding of schizophrenia as not an illness which requires a straight jacket, but deference and understanding, and has achieved the penultimate achievement for a playwright (before a Tony award/Broadway production) which is a Dramatist Play Service volume.

In the director’s notes, Trace Oakley says “I find the play just as relevant now as then.” Seriously? With all the knowledge we have at our fingertips at any moment, you think that placing the play in its original time and place somehow helps us understand the current climate, how? I guess I’d like to see more of a moving forward and less of a period piece; away from the discussion of “what was” and more to the point of “what’s next?”

Or the producers should call it what it is.