{"id":247811,"date":"2014-09-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/this-wide-night\/"},"modified":"2014-09-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T07:00:00","slug":"this-wide-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/this-wide-night\/","title":{"rendered":"This Wide Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charlene Baldridge | Theater Review<\/span><\/p>\n

Through Oct. 11, British playwright Chlo\u00eb Moss\u2019s \u201cThis Wide Night\u201d \u2014 a tense and touching two-hander set in present-day London \u2014 plays at Hillcrest\u2019s ion theatre<\/a>. If you love fine acting and meticulous work, do not miss it. Directed by Founder\/Executive Artistic Director Claudio Raygoza (assistant director is Hannah Logan), actors Rhianna Basore (Marie) and Yolanda Franklin (Lorraine) are utterly convincing as friends who have no future, not with each other and not with life.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_0588aweb\"<\/a>
Rhianna Basore and Yolanda Franklin in \u201cThis Wide Night\u201d (Photo by Ron Logan\/ion theatre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They met in prison, where they were cellmates. With no thought of moving in, the just-released Lorraine appears at Marie\u2019s door. Marie persuades the exhausted Lorraine to stay for just one night. One night stretches over the course of the 90-minute work into what appears to be months.<\/p>\n

Apparently more stable and employed part-time as a barmaid, Marie encourages Lorraine to locate the son she gave up for adoption when she was incarcerated years ago. She also promises to talk to her boss about a possible job opening at the pub and encourages Lorraine to get off her medications, bragging that she quit hers cold turkey.<\/p>\n

\"Rhianna<\/a>
Rhianna Basore costars as a recently released inmate in \u201cThis Wide Night\u201d at ion theatre. (Photo by Ron Logan\/ion theatre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The one-room flat is squalid and unkempt, and just as the women\u2019s lives, is emblematic of their inability to tend to anything, let alone friendship, jobs and the creation of a new life.<\/p>\n

Gradually, the playwright seduces onlookers to care for these women, to believe that they can have a new life. Then she dashes us with cold water. The journey from renewed acquaintance to seemingly genuine caring to deluge is a masterful, white-knuckle experience. It is exceptionally well supported by the actors, whose characters struggle with self and the other. Their fragile equanimity and amity is never overplayed, just present and always subject to explosion.<\/p>\n

The play begins with Basore staring blankly at the telly, which has no sound and has been broken for months. Her state of mental disarray and physical exhaustion is apparent. After Lorraine arrives, the question is who takes care of the other. They take turns.<\/p>\n

\"SDUN<\/a>After its 2008 debut at Soho Theatre, \u201cThis Wide Night\u201d toured women\u2019s prisons in the UK. It received the 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Playwriting Prize. The work goes right along with ion\u2019s promise to deliver bold, uncompromising theatre.<\/p>\n

That promise carries over into ion\u2019s forthcoming ninth season, \u201cOut of the Box,\u201d which begins in November. Raygoza and Founding Producer and Artistic Director Glenn Paris have announced a season of new works written by either or both of them, one of which will make its off-Broadway premiere in June, then return to play here in August. Additionally, recently named Associate Artistic Director Kim Strassberger will stage the Stephen Sondheim\/James Lapine musical, \u201cSunday in the Park With George,\u201d in September 2015.<\/p>\n

\u2014Charlene Baldridge has been writing about the arts since 1979. Her book \u201cSan Diego, Jewel of the California Coast\u201d (Northland Publishing) is currently available in bookstores. She can be reached at <\/em>charb81@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Charlene Baldridge | Theater Review Through Oct. 11, British playwright Chlo\u00eb Moss\u2019s \u201cThis Wide Night\u201d \u2014 a tense and touching two-hander set in present-day London \u2014 plays at Hillcrest\u2019s ion theatre. If you love fine acting and meticulous work, do not miss it.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":247812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"This Wide Night","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11547,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-features","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}