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Arrivals // Departures

by Tania Katan and Daniele Nathanson
SF Weekly Review November 15, 2000 (Joe Mader)

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Arrivals//Departures

This Shotgun Players original
production capers nicely along with
fresh, witty dialogue (by playwrights
Tania Katan and Daniele
Nathanson), and contains a
wonderful performance by Amanda
Duarte. (She's also been brilliant in
Chekhov and Shaw this season.
She's a knockout.) Director Katie
Bales stages the show creatively, especially the rapid scene
changes. But Arrivals//Departures isn't as satisfying an
experience as Shotgun's glorious Swimming in the Shallows last
year. The story concerns a family whose mother left years ago
from the local small-town airport. The son, Nick (Ryan
Gowland), a would-be filmmaker, works as a ticketing agent at
the same airport and screws around with flight announcements.
("She's beautiful, she's exotic, she's Scranton -- now departing
from gate 3.") His sister, Felix (Jennifer Taggart), a parachutist,
has just met Rose (Lindsay Anderson) on a flight and is giddy in
love, while crusty Dad (Gene Thompson) is about to marry Carol,
who's served his needs weekly for the past 11 years. Duarte is
Tori, a neurotic whose many love affairs have been so disastrous
that she's enrolled in a "Survival on the Urban Tundra" class.
Despite the instruction, she falls headlong for Nick -- and speaks
in narration. "She is impressed," she remarks to a response of his.
But the whole enterprise feels cute, lacking weight or malice. This
is partly due to Bale's direction -- she zooms through the script --
and partly to the acting. Most of the cast bark out their yearnings
to each other and rarely vary their vocalizations: Their comic
timing is good, but their roles don't come to life. (Duarte is an
exception -- Tori's every rapid shift vibrates with feeling.) The
characters lurch in and out of relationships, seemingly without
consequence. Nothing resonates but the offbeat humor, and
you're left with clever, pat sitcom. Arrivals//Departures doesn't
reach its destination.
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