Framed



In Framed, produced by Snowflake Avalanche and now playing (for one more day, with a final show at 3pm on Sunday, November 25) at 18th & Union, Susanna Burney plays Joanie DaSilva, a painter desperate to succeed. To me, she approached tragic. I felt bad for her. To my companion, she was a deluded, reckless, unsympathetic fool. This is fine because the show plays with the idea of art interpretation. Each of the four characters also has their own take on painting, what’s important and what’s real. You, the audience also can make of Joanie what you will.
Joanie sells some of her work and also teaches painting. She measures herself against the opinions of the local art world, embodied by one particular gallery owner. Her work is never deemed good enough. May Carter (another incredible Maile Wong performance) is a young woman who shows up to learn to paint. She has a specific reason. Joanie stresses proper “technique” but it becomes clear that May has talent and ease that Joanie comes to envy.
Joanie’s husband, Nick, (Joe Seefeldt) runs coin-operated laundromats as a front for his illegal gambling business. He makes a lot of money. Just to make Joanie happy, Nick has been buying Joanie’s paintings, without her knowledge. When she finds out, she walks out on Nick and goes to live in her studio. Rather than give up her dream, she resorts to theft. What was sad to me was that she wanted something so badly, but she was never going to have it. Her reaction was both inexcusable and understandable – and ultimately unsustainable.
Nick tries to play teacher also to May’s husband Jake (Jeremy Steckler.) Jake’s a kind of blank canvas and falls for Nick’s advice to live life according checklists – more technique! Nick’s teachings are as questionable as Joanie’s. In the end, though, the younger couple sees what they need to see and gets what they want to get from their interactions with the older couple and it looks like their life together will be great. Nick and Joanie, I’m not sure. It’s open to interpretation at the end.
The direction by Mark Lutwak is just right. The interactions between and among the couples, even when they are at odds are treated with a light touch and are played for laughs, with lot of credit to Steckler in that regard, right up until the point where I was wanting a little darkness to seep in, a little tension to bubble up. And then it did, just in time to raise the stakes.
Photo by Snowflake Avalanche.

This first appeared on my Facebook page on November 25, 2018. 

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