Apollinaire Theatre in Chelsea has earned a reputation for embracing
edgy scripts and playing the heck out of them! Michael Perlman’s FROM WHITE
PLAINS (running through Dec. 14th) is no exception. The subject is
bullying and the dramatic fallout is intense.
National Public Radio recently reported the
shocking results of a study of integrated anti-bullying programs (which had
been part of junior high and high school curricula for at least five years).
The study concluded that these programs made bullies smarter and savvier. They
learned what teachers look for and they learned how not to get caught!
I could hardly believe my ears. If education
doesn’t work, what’s then to be done? Since seeing Apollinaire’s FROM WHITE
PLAINS, I’ve decided theater is the answer. All parties suffer in Perlman’s
scenario. In fact, on the ride home, three of us debated who was hurt more in
the play. We debated whether or not the victim should become a bully to right
the wrong. In the play, a filmmaker has won his first Oscar based on real
events about bullying. He dedicates the statue to the victim who killed himself
when they were in high school together. Then, on national television, he names
the high school bully.
At first, the grown man who “teased” kids in
high school can’t even remember his victim. He admits he was an “asshole” to
everyone in high school but, he tells a friend, he’s moved on and matured.
Unfortunately for him, the whole world now knows his history and what’s past is
now present in the very public arena of the internet. Bad things start to
happen to him.
Director Danielle Fauteux Jacques’ lovely
production is unerringly fair to both sides. The performances are so finely
wrought that you find yourself, despite yourself, having sympathy for everyone
involved. Brooks Reeves, as the filmmaker who ignites the firestorm by naming
the bully, has an achingly beautiful, sorrowful speech about the power of a
bully’s voice which every student in every school in the nation ought to hear. Reeves
draws you in to his pain and you understand why he has to pursue the bully
(Steven DeMarco in a tour de force), even to the detriment of his own happiness.
Diego Buscaglia gives a sweet, beatific
performance as the man who wants to “save” the filmmaker from his obsession
with the bully and Mauro Canepa as the bully’s estranged best friend shows us
his distress over his ambivalence. Some of the early scenes seem repetitive but
once the plot kicks in, FROM WHITE PLAINS works like gangbusters.
