REVIEW: A Jumping-Off Point (Round House Theatre)

Round House’s signature production of their National Capital New Play Festival, now in its third year, doesn’t hesitate to poke the bear. It says so pretty plainly in the lobby, in fact. On the wall opposite the bar, there’s a few blurbs showcasing the shows that Round House is highlighting in this year’s festival. On one, playwright Inda Craig-Galvan specifically hopes the audience leaves her show, A Jumping-Off Point, in debate. That part’s done, check; the first thing I tried to reconcile when writing this review was “who’s right, exactly?” And while Craig-Galvan does great at delivering points in the final two-thirds, it had a rocky road to get there.

Book

Leslie is a playwright on the cusp of the big-time. A successful play about the Mississippi Delta has put her on the map, garnering her a lucrative TV show contract with HBO (or Max. Nobody’s really sure anymore.) She gets an email from an old grad school classmate — eh, who cares — and ignores it. But of course, the next morning, in almost a dream-like stupor, said classmate Andrew literally barges into her house to assail her about her career: she allegedly plagiarized his play to make the one that started it. This borderline nonsensical kickstart keeps you wondering “Why?”. Why hasn’t she kicked this guy out yet? Why is she taking this flak? It ropes the audience into a sticky situation that persists through its 95 minutes; It’s not so much cleaned from you by the end, but you just get used to the discomfort. Once the tone is set, Leslie and Andrew enter an uneasy business relationship built on mud foundations of distrust. Mediating the two through the many years the play spans is Leslie’s best friend/roommate Miriam, whose motivations are never clear. Inexplicably, she plays both sides, despite no attachment to this man, who has shown up with threats to derail her best friend’s entire career. To play Devil’s Advocate, Andrew does have an argument that could make sense: that his own derided play about the Delta could have been effectively (and later, admittedly) taken by Leslie and turned into something much more substantial. In a real Play-Of-Theseus situation, it explores the idea of idea ownership. Even if she did take his play as a basis, whose to say it’s the same one? What if people have similar ideas at the same time? This discourse is the bedrock of Craig-Galvan’s request of debate, which once I was able to get to the kernel, I could work with; I merely found its patchwork approach of overt hypotheticals distracting from the primary message. 7/10

Acting

Perhaps limited by the scope of the piece, I found the acting equally reserved among the trio. Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong with this, but with as explosive and oft-humorous as the book can be, I suppose I expected a greater breadth of emotion. It felt that Nikkole Salter’s Leslie particularly was pigeonholed; a character being blasted with career-unraveling accusations arguably should be more pissed about it, but it felt like she was only mildly annoyed for most of the play, some unseen force limiting the character’s eruptive potential. (Granted, something could be said about Leslie not wanting to give Andrew any fuel for the Angry Black Woman trope.) Danny Gavigan (Andrew) and Cristina Pitter (Miriam) surround Nikkole with subdusion to solid impact. Gavigan delivers the slimy, vengeful if not naïve performance expected, and despite my issues with Miriam as a character, Pitter’s rich voice lends itself splendidly to her humor and guidance. 4/10

Production

Meghan Raham’s grayly textured panels flip between its handful of settings, but rarely do Amith’s Chandrashaker’s lighting designs make use of this to establish environment, leading much of the play to feel the same. However, I appreciated Jade King Carroll’s direction, especially in scenes where Leslie and Andrew are at panels and talk to the audience. House lights are up and you feel part of the action without breaking the fourth wall. 5/10

Viz

Round House leans into the fight over script ownership in its program art, and pre-show immediately puts us into the pretext that Leslie is approaching the top of her game by framing our arrival as not to a play, but to a talk on her career to this point. Good bit of worldbuilding effort from Carroll. 7/10

Verdict

A Jumping-Off Point struggles to get to the point effectively, but by the time it does it develops an earnestly solid debate on what defines “ownership”. 23/40