Max Williamson
Ayanna Ellzey
By Marilyn Jozwik
Josiah Thomas Turner
Theater has been a pale version of its former self during these COVID-challenged months. But there are still ways to make it shine, virtually: good story-telling and acting can overcome the obstacles currently presented.
On Jan. 14, The Constructivists offered a live presentation of “Eliza on the Ice,” an original play by Josiah Thomas Turner, directed by Malaina Moore.
The compelling thriller utilized just two performers, each presenting their characters remotely via YouTube at www.constructivists.org. It can currently be viewed at that site. Donations are welcome.
With those strikes against it -- a virtual format with actors at different locations – the show had some ground to make up. Yet, it took only moments to be thoroughly drawn into the world created by Turner. The story opens with Matthew Bennett doing voiceover of stage directions in a serious, “Dragnet” sort of voice. He describes a basement living quarters on the outskirts of Slinger, Wisconsin, as “a college apartment … never abandoned.” It is dark and cheerless, complete with “an ancient box TV.”
We see the two characters on separate screens – Eliza (Ayanna Ellzey) and Tom (Max Williamson). Minutes in, we can feel the tension in the situation. Tom has come in from a blizzard and confronts Eliza. She is saying things like, “I want to make you happy, sweetie” and calling him “my man.” But there’s an edge to her voice. Her words are hiding something, a tone which Ellzey’s Eliza maintains throughout the play. Though desperate, she is confident of her own guile. When Tom chastises her for putting her hair up, saying, “I want your hair long, something to grab onto,” you know this is a complicated situation. His voice has a sinister tone. He is cocky and condescending, smirking with self-satisfaction in his perceived control, which is confirmed as the narrator describes the gun in his waistband. Meanwhile, Eliza is making mental calculations.
Turner’s story is taut, each character providing more clues to who they are and how they got to this point. Eliza is smart – a college student, motivated, self-assured. With each situation, you can see the wheels turning in her head, assessing the situation and opportunities for escape. By the time we see her, she knows how to play the game to stay safe, until she realizes she has an ace card, which mostly guarantees she won’t be harmed by Tom. Yet, how short is Tom’s fuse?
The conversations are masterful, capturing the mindsets of oppressed and oppressor, which both Williamson and Ellzey handle so well. When Eliza seems jumpy, Tom confronts her with, “You got a fast mouth, Eliza. You gotta lie slow.” Early on, Eliza, dripping with terms of endearment, asks Tom, “Don’t you like me sweet?” to which Tom snarls, “I don’t trust you sweet.”
Each scene, cleverly separated by blackouts in the apartment, is pressure-packed, the cat-and-mouse game playing out as each character learns more about each other. Turner has created a psychological thriller that keeps the audience just as engaged as the characters.
The edge-of-your-seat tension travels through Eliza’s captivity--using a Biblical parable of 40 days and 40 nights, according to Turner in the talkback after the show. At that time, Turner also said that the play’s theme and character names are taken from “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 book describing the evils of slavery. In the book, Eliza, a hunted slave, escapes to Canada, at one point running over frozen patches of the Ohio River.
The show is still being refined for the time when live theater returns. Once shedding the cloak of virtuality, the show should elevate to an even more outstanding psychological thriller.