Without Walls

Without Walls
Mark Taper Forum
June 6, 2006

Star power is the draw of this play and this production at the Mark Taper Forum. And one gets it in the form of Laurence Fishburne, of Matrix, Mission Impossible III and most recently, Akeelah and the Bee fame.

But the play is just okay. It's not a particularly compelling play, though from the description it sounds fine: A high school drama teacher becomes close to the students he cares for - perhaps too close - and the scandal that ensues changes each of their lives. Unfortunately the play isn't written in a way that makes you necessarily care about the story, or even the characters. We hit the ground running in a scene where a young transfer student, Anton McCormick (played by Matt Lanter, from Commander in Chief and, ahem, Manhunt) visits Morroco Hemphill, a black high school drama teacher (Fishburne), and brashly introduces himself, asking to be accepted to Hemphill's selective school. As the play progresses, we get some information about the characters: Morocco was once a professional actor, but was relegated to chorus roles, perhaps because of his skin color; Anton is searching desperately for a father figure to replace the dad that walked out on him; and there is a third character, one of Hemphill's star drama students (played by Amanda McDonald), who has a pushy father and who is jealous of the new attention Anton is getting.

Unfortunately, things speed along too quickly for us to get a real grasp of why the characters act the way that they do. Life altering decisions are made with seemingly little motivation, and we as an audience are expected to just go for the ride. But the play has given us no reason to follow along, and thus we are just observing without really caring.

The acting is fine, and that keeps us entertained - Fishburne has a grand Shakesperean type role where he can boom, resonate and take lots of showy accents for effect. He does know how to pull his emotional punches though, and every once in awhile you forget that he is forcing his way through a thinly written scene. Lanter looks visibly uncomfortable on stage, which works very well when he's supposed to be uncomfortable, and only about adequately elsewhere. This is reportedly his first stage job, and it's certainly a promising start, but he has a long way to go to catch up to Fishburne. (Plus we're pleasantly distracted when he takes off most all of his clothes in one scene...) Amanda McDonald makes the most out of her brief time on stage - cute and responsive, comfortable in her stage skin. She can't quite make up for the sudden, unexplained turn that her character takes towards the end of the play though - not so much her fault as the writing's.

So we follow along half heartedly with the actors of the play, leaving having been entertained by Fishburne and the gang, but not having done much more than when we started.