"The Prior 55," a beautifully written tragedy on the bayou

Photos by J.R. Thomason

"The Prior 55," a new play written by Andrea Fulton, directed by Patricia Floyd and presented by and at Theater for the New City, begins with a man and a woman down on the Louisiana bayou. The man, who is homeless, has retreated as if into this wood-like area to live away from the world. The woman, a psychiatric nurse, has come here, off duty, to convince him to return to civilization. The stakes are clear fairly early. This man will either continue to live in the wilderness or return to society and the possibility of a fuller life. Or is it that simple?

The play turns assumptions on their head, as we find Redman Blue, the homeless man played by Michael Green convincing us that, just maybe, he is more sane than Mahala, played by Martine Fleurisma. Both performers mix the grit of realism with the flair of a beautifully written script. Patricia Floyd’s direction subtly shifts power between the two, as each seeks to win the poker hand of this play. And along the way, we find ourselves both admiring the realistic, yet artistic portrayals of the two actors, and the poetic realism of the writing that has us questioning our own assumptions. Is it possible that the trappings we take for sanity and society don’t make us happy? Is it possible that this man, who is full of humanity, philosophy and a touch of poetry, has found something that we’re all missing?

Yes, he’s hurt, wounded and even broken, but maybe he’s a least searching This is not an idealized view of homelessness. It is, though, a tragic view of one, where the causes are not substances, but experiences that rob us of our humanity early and make it difficult to recover. We are knocked down so far and so hard that it becomes difficult, if not impossible to get up and move on. As much a play about humanity as homelessness, The Prior 55 develops slowly, like a strip tease of the soul, raising and answering questions and raising the stakes, until it reaches a climax to a well written, tight, even taut script with twists that work and a powerful plot that shows us that this is not simply a drama, but classic tragedy set in the Louisiana wilderness.

The play opens with a set showing us a beautiful bayou, not so much menacing as majestic that should be a clue. Hardly a dangerous wilderness, it is a painterly landscape. Michael Green, who moves effortlessly through the script, calls this “my house,” although later on we will find this is literal. “What am I supposed to be afraid of?” Green asks with Shakespearean stage presence. “Are you dangerous to me?” In this wilderness, people are the most dangerous animals. We find out that Mahala, played by Martine Fleurisma with the realism of a film acted in front of us, has a gun strapped to her ankle. “People care about you,” she says, although from the start we wonder who is saving whom? Each is wounded, as we see a couple of angels with broken wings. The sounds of the bayou echo around them, reminding us they are in another world. She brings a sandwich, a small offering and one that he downplays. Yes, she wants something from him, the sense of success and salvation that goes with making a difference. He wants the peace and quiet that go with retreating from reality. Only one can get what they want.

Tennessee Williams sometimes got in trouble by intruding on his characters’ thoughts, as the author’s voice spouted poetry, but the philosophy and poetry here fit. Green delivers homespun poetry in the form of dialogue, rather than the other way around, describing the virtues of the sun and the moon. We hear about the phrase many moons ago. “It takes you back in time,” he says of the moon in language as beautiful as the finely crafted scenery. As time passes, we wonder who is lost? Are we lost in our wilderness of brick and concrete? Or is he lost in the beauty of a lonely wilderness? Green says women no longer need men except “when something is so heavy.” What a shame to only have to seek each other out when we need a hammer, not a heart. We have lost the need for one another. So who is more lonely, a man in the wilderness or one in an urban wilderness? Green also asks why some white people are afraid of some black people. “It’s not because we’re scary,” he says with characteristic intensity. “It’ because we’re powerful.” He says it’s because of their pain. “People are afraid pieces or our pain will rain down on them.” It’s just beautifully written and spoken, but this is poetry for the stage delivered in the moment and not recited like a middle school poem.

Fleurisma, though, delivers a wonderful monologue, the kind you hear in auditions, that may be the centerpiece of the show, enumerating her character’s many fears with the precision usually reserved for poetry. These people are speaking to each other, but also to themselves and to the audience. When Green asks for pot, or at least edibles, he reminds us that there were more than apples in Eden. Who cares about carbs? He is tired of all the talk and the rules and the regulation. Flerisuma obliges, giving him a joint and then smoking. But she begins hearing voices, reminding us that sanity is in the eye of the beholder. She has been grounded, seated on the tree stump, in Floyd’s well thought out directing, while he drifts around the stage, freedom embodies. He now sits on a tree stump, as she begins hearing voices that are piped in, as we realize that she is the one with the loose grip on reality. Green says he calls this place “paradise,” not a place to be homeless. Is a home a building or a sense of belonging?

Sartre wrote that hell is other people, although I have always felt that hell is solitary. Green clearly enjoys companionship, singing, dancing and smiling. Yet a second person intrudes on his character’s sense of self. “I don’t want to be right,” he shouts. “I want to be left the hell alone.” Of course, none of us is ever alone after a certain age. Our past is always there. The ghosts of the people who formed us never fully go away as we grapple with the past’s refusal to let go of the present. Green lets us know that he found a mailbox buried in the ground, so he technically has an address, and therefore can get marijuana delivered. But that turns out to be a clue as to the larger mystery of why and how he ended up homeless and separated from society. He is told repeatedly to find a place that matters and is home, yet the irony is, as we find out toward the end, this is the only home he will ever know.

In this play, things really begin to unreel when Fleurisma asks why he has set up shop here with his sleeping bag and sorrow. Then we find out about the tragedies that befell him here, although I won’t go into detail and rob the play of its revelations. A tragic past led him to return to this spot, that has meaning in his life. Just as he can never let go of the past, he can’t let go of the people who he once knew at this place. After Green’s character confesses things he says he has never confessed to anyone else, he pulls a gun on Fleurisma’s character. That leads to a showdown that feels very much like a Southern Western, Sam Shepard and bravado on the bayou. They circle each other, pointing guns. Who will fire first? Who will fire? Suffice it to say, in the end, they both back down and reach a kind of credible compromise as she is welcomed into his “crib” after he has gone through his catharsis, a la Greek tragedy. We saw them lying down on a sleeping back side by side, but still in their own world. Now they’re both in the same universe. She makes him an offer at the end, indicating she has brought more than a sandwich.

The two have reconciled, it seems. He leaves first to take her somewhere to eat, granting her a victory, although we see her left, briefly, alone in the Louisiana bayou. As I left the theater, I kept thinking of the beauty of this play about two people who, in the end, do save each other by piercing the bubble of loneliness around them. “The sun and the stars and the moon in my room,” Green says, when asked why he doesn’t just take shelter beneath a roof. Who wouldn’t want that? We all may need bigger worlds rather than the shrunken worlds of the spaces in which we live. I can only say that this small theater space stretched its walls to welcome a bigger world and a play worthy of publication and many more productions to come.