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Sea of Tranquility
Book by Howard Korder
- GenresPlays
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 9, 2022
I'm not sure if Howard Korder wants his play Sea of Tranquility to be taken simply at face value as a ripping yarn, or if he intends something deeper, along the lines of allegory. Evidence for the former includes a twisty, edge-of-your-seat plot that feels like something out of a Hitchcock movie by the end of Act One and then morphs ever-more sinisterly in its second half, along with a larger than usual number of quirky supporting characters who, mounting suspense notwithstanding, keep grabbing at our attention.
Yet I'm inclined to believe that the playwright is interested in more than gripping storytelling here, else why give his play such an ironically deceptive title (for there's nothing tranquil about this piece)? And why make such obvious use of symbols: the two leading characters, a married couple, live in a house that is rotting away at its very foundation, even as the wife is suffering from an intensifying and exponentially debilitating disease; their houseguest, meanwhile--her younger brother, recently fired from his job writing TV sitcoms--is given, by his underage girlfriend, an impromptu artwork which she describes as a pile of junk with nothing holding it together. It's heavy-handed, to be sure, but isn't Korder trying to tell us something about the cancer that's eating away at America nowadays?
Sea of Tranquility is about Ben, a family therapist, and his wife Nessa, a popular science writer, who have moved west (from Connecticut to New Mexico) to start a new life together. They find that they cannot; that stuff from their pasts--accumulations of personal and collective guilts--prevents them from starting over.
Everyone else in the play is trying to revise themselves as well. Nessa's brother Randy is the most obvious example, searching in Ben's hot tub and in the eyes of his young neo-hippie companion for a fresh beginning after having sold out whatever soul and talent he may have once had in Hollywood. But renewal is also on the minds of Phyllis and Ashley, the lesbian couple who have also relocated to Santa Fe from the East with Phyllis's disaffected adolescent son Josh, all patients of Ben; of convicted murderer Gilbert, with whom Ben works as a volunteer; and especially of Astarte, a troubled young woman who may or may not have stolen a great deal of money from the Church of Scientology and who subsequently, abetted by Church lawyer Johannsen, falsely accuses Ben of assaulting and raping her.
Everybody wants to change; nobody can: Sea of Tranquility suggests that corruption and self-interest have become so endemic to our culture as to render better impulses impotent. It's a bitter, bleak outlook; Korder is going Albee and Miller one better in dissecting the American Dream and finding only emptiness and ugliness within.
But the play fails to make a clear cut case for this point of view, though, which is why I began by waffling about Korder's ultimate objective. The story, as I hope I've suggested, is loaded with incident, with plenty of surprising turns and a few red herrings; at times, it feels like these characters are victims of the machinations of others (or perhaps even of a playfully vengeful God), which kind of works against the theme I've postulated.
This is a compelling and provocative piece of theater. Sea of Tranquility finally does not succeed as either psychological drama or political cautionary fable, but it's nevertheless worth reading: we should not discount the moods and musings of our dramatists, even when they don't add up to exactly as much as we would wish them to.
Yet I'm inclined to believe that the playwright is interested in more than gripping storytelling here, else why give his play such an ironically deceptive title (for there's nothing tranquil about this piece)? And why make such obvious use of symbols: the two leading characters, a married couple, live in a house that is rotting away at its very foundation, even as the wife is suffering from an intensifying and exponentially debilitating disease; their houseguest, meanwhile--her younger brother, recently fired from his job writing TV sitcoms--is given, by his underage girlfriend, an impromptu artwork which she describes as a pile of junk with nothing holding it together. It's heavy-handed, to be sure, but isn't Korder trying to tell us something about the cancer that's eating away at America nowadays?
Sea of Tranquility is about Ben, a family therapist, and his wife Nessa, a popular science writer, who have moved west (from Connecticut to New Mexico) to start a new life together. They find that they cannot; that stuff from their pasts--accumulations of personal and collective guilts--prevents them from starting over.
Everyone else in the play is trying to revise themselves as well. Nessa's brother Randy is the most obvious example, searching in Ben's hot tub and in the eyes of his young neo-hippie companion for a fresh beginning after having sold out whatever soul and talent he may have once had in Hollywood. But renewal is also on the minds of Phyllis and Ashley, the lesbian couple who have also relocated to Santa Fe from the East with Phyllis's disaffected adolescent son Josh, all patients of Ben; of convicted murderer Gilbert, with whom Ben works as a volunteer; and especially of Astarte, a troubled young woman who may or may not have stolen a great deal of money from the Church of Scientology and who subsequently, abetted by Church lawyer Johannsen, falsely accuses Ben of assaulting and raping her.
Everybody wants to change; nobody can: Sea of Tranquility suggests that corruption and self-interest have become so endemic to our culture as to render better impulses impotent. It's a bitter, bleak outlook; Korder is going Albee and Miller one better in dissecting the American Dream and finding only emptiness and ugliness within.
But the play fails to make a clear cut case for this point of view, though, which is why I began by waffling about Korder's ultimate objective. The story, as I hope I've suggested, is loaded with incident, with plenty of surprising turns and a few red herrings; at times, it feels like these characters are victims of the machinations of others (or perhaps even of a playfully vengeful God), which kind of works against the theme I've postulated.
This is a compelling and provocative piece of theater. Sea of Tranquility finally does not succeed as either psychological drama or political cautionary fable, but it's nevertheless worth reading: we should not discount the moods and musings of our dramatists, even when they don't add up to exactly as much as we would wish them to.
July 27, 2014
This is a terrific play by one of the best contemporary American playwrights writing today. The play follows the travails of Ben Green, a therapist who has moved to New Mexico from Connecticut to try to start afresh after making some terrible personal and professional mistakes. He hopes he can reclaim his belief in himself by helping his clients and the people in his life to live as the people they want to be, but he finds that there can be danger in trying to help the desperate. As his his life dissolves around him, he searches for a reason to continue to do what he asks his clients to do- make the effort to live.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews