With February being the month of Valentine’s Day and LGBTQ History, Learning How To Dive makes a perfectly timed debut at the White Bear Theatre. Directed by Willie Elliott and written by Brendan Murray, this thoughtful, tender and often heartbreaking play offers us a response to the question, “what happens after love?”
Opening with the news of a death, Learning How To Dive plunges the audience into immediate intrigue; a sensation that doesn’t ease until the end of the play. Even still, the ‘who’s and ‘why’s behind this death take their time coming to the surface. It’s a smart decision on Murray’s part. Giving the audience time to sit with the characters and understand the complexity behind their decisions also allows the audience to approach the play with more nuance.
Over the course of Act One, Matt (Darren Cheek) holds back grief over his father while spitting with resentment towards Terry (Murray). Terry’s link to Matt is initially unclear, but it’s apparent that Terry knows a lot about Matt and his late father, despite this being the first time they’ve met. Cheek and Murray play their characters as perfect foils for each other: where Matt is guarded, almost ashamed of his grief and indignant over his father’s lies, Terry is charming, emotionally expressive and ready to defend himself and Barry. Together, their heartbreak creates a presence on stage, a fourth character that makes it harder for them to say goodbye to each other.
The presence becomes more tangible in Act II, where we meet Barry’s bereaved wife, Jill. This act is almost entirely performed as a monologue, wherein Jill speaks to the presence: Barry. Playing Jill, actor Karen Spicer takes the audience on a journey of nostalgia, sympathy, impending fear and, finally, heartbreak. Not only does she display an incredible depth of love for a character who never appears on stage, she lets the audience into the love that could have been, if life were different, if the world were different.
Learning How To Dive almost underestimates the bottomless trench created by the cast, in terms of how intrigued and invested the audience becomes in every character’s story — including the ones that never appear on stage. Part of the reason for this is that the play is set in the round in an already intimate space, thereby blurring the line between where reality ends and performance starts. However, it is mainly a testament to the strength of the writing, direction, and the cast’s undeniable empathy and compassion for the characters they play.
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