Blind ambition

Butterflies shows that feel-good isn’t so bad

By Katherine Joyce

Butterflies are Free runs through June 23 at MainePlay Productions in Portland. Call (207) 771-5611.

SEEING EYE-TO-EYE: Michael Tobin and Juli Brooks in Butterflies Are Free.

Everyone is fairly familiar with the “feel-good” movie genre. As it turns out, there is a similar genre in theater into which Butterflies are Free squarely fits. The parallels are notable — the script is somewhat simplistic, sometimes didactic, and funny-in-a-tender-kind-of-way. The characters start out as stereotypes, but evolve into interesting people over the course of the play. However, in theater, the feel-good play seems a little bit more personal. The audience of a live performance is slightly more vulnerable than a movie audience, and more susceptible to being charmed and engaged by a heart-warming script. And there is suspense: the characters all have their own baggage, and the audience watches as they struggle with it. Triumph never seems certain.

Don is a young man setting out on his own for the first time. He has his own tiny apartment in New York City, and although his overbearing mother calls often, they have a deal that she won’t come by for two months. Although the apartment has paper-thin walls, and he must share a bathroom with his next-door neighbor, Don seems perfectly content with his modest existence.

The set is a somewhat typical first apartment. A kitchen one can barely wedge oneself into, a college-sized refrigerator, a bed on stilts, a ragged living room set. The design allows for the slightly chaotic feel of a first apartment without being messy, which would make it difficult for Don to navigate without eyesight (pssst: he’s blind).

Although Don seems happy, his mother is completely miserable with his modest existence. Billed as a nosy, over-involved mother from Scarsdale, she seems to occupy a great deal of space in Don’s mind. Her little boy is breaking away from her nest and she is not at all sure that she is ready to let him go. Her needling statements, her veiled (and overt) criticisms are all aimed at diminishing his confidence in the hopes that he might need her again.

Jill is a new arrival — his new next-door neighbor with whom he shares the bathroom. They begin with a conversation through the walls, and end up spending the day together, each happy to have found a new friend in the big city. Jill is an aspiring actress, and came to New York from California to pursue that goal (and, one gleans, to annoy her mother). She seems to have lived a somewhat adventurous life.

She is upbeat and starry-eyed, to the point of being somewhat oblivious to the rest of the world. So oblivious in fact, that it takes her about 10 minutes of hanging out with Don to figure out that he is blind. Not that he wears it on his sleeve, but most people would quickly notice that the person with whom they are talking is not ever making eye contact, or looking directly at them.

So what happens when the naïve blind man in his first apartment away from home meets the sweet, flaky, enthusiastic woman next door? The script begins as unpromising. The conversation between the two starts off as a didactic look at the practicalities of being blind. How does he know that she’s moved? Because her voice comes from a different place if she’s moved. How does he get around the apartment without bumping into things? He’s memorized the floor plan. How does he find his way around the neighborhood? He’s memorized how many steps to the laundry, to the deli, and his cane helps him to avoid any obstacles along the way.

In spite of the rocky beginning, in the middle of the first act this after-school special script turns into a charming look at a new beginning for two somewhat lost souls. This is due in no small part to the charm and sweetness of both Michael Tobin (Don) and Juli Brooks (Jill). They both struggle through the early dialogue, having trouble saying the words without some affect. As they ease into the roles, and the script ends its lesson on the more obvious aspects of being blind, both become genuinely likeable, interesting characters for whom the audience cannot help but root.

The wrench is thrown into the works when Don’s mother shows up. Carol Warner does a chillingly brilliant job of playing a manipulative and cruel mother. She is appalled at his living condition, nearly apoplectic that he is living in such close quarters with his flaky neighbor. She has come to take her little blind boy home, and is willing to cut his self-respect into pieces to win the battle. When the audience is exposed to the dynamics of their relationship, all of Jill’s gushing about how amazing Don is for not being bitter begins to sound more and more valid. Don’s good nature and boyish sense of humor are particularly touching in contrast with his nastily sarcastic mother.

Directed by Mason Meserve, Butterflies Are Free is an engaging story of the evolution of a young man from his extended childhood under the watchful eye of his mother, into his independent adulthood, where he is no longer protected from the heartaches of the world. His growing up forces those around him to grow up in unexpected and welcome ways.

For this play, at least, the single off of Sloan’s latest album seems appropriate: “If it feels good, do it.”

Katherine Joyce can be reached at ingliskat@aol.com.