Theater review: Mauritius

by Joan Arbery of Renegade Bus

Theresa Rebeck’s Mauritius elevates stamps to the level of grail status, granting them the same fetishistic role that armory and boar-heads might have for others. Yet while stamps are miniscule compared to the size of other collectibles, they too can be the foci of grief, greed, violence, and anger. Rebeck uses stamps and the idea of post-marking and canceling out as a way to comment on the soul itself. Like stamps, which adhere to envelopes and send news on its way, the actions of life adhere to souls. How we post-mark ourselves determines whether we’re first-class mail or undeliverable.

These aspects, both of the beauty and greed that can accompany philately and of the darkness and joys the soul can transmit, are thoughtfully, and sometimes quite threateningly, brought to the fore in Echo Theatre’s production of Mauritius, directed by Terri Ferguson at the Bath House Cultural Center in Dallas through September 26.

In the play, Jackie’s (Leslie Patrick) mother has died, leaving her and her sister Mary (Brandi Andrade) to take care of the estate. Jackie has suffered some unspoken wrong within the family and desperately wants restitution. She comes across an old stamp book and goes into a collector’s store to see how much the stamps cost. A fracas ensues when Philip (Brian Witkowicz), tired of the useless stamps he’s seen at his store, won’t look at them. Dennis (David Meglino), a slinky hanger-about, sees their value and weasels his way into Jackie’s life. When Sterling (Tony Martin), an irascible buyer, gets wind of what Jackie’s book holds, the ante is upped. Everyone becomes embroiled in the stamps: who their rightful owner is, what they’re worth, and what kind of bargain Jackie will drive.

The actors in Echo’s Mauritius, while sometimes tripping over their lines, all manage to access the monomaniacal needs their characters have. The opening of the play is quite slow as we move from Jackie’s hemming and hawing over what she wants, but when she finally discovers what she has, things move quickly. Leslie Patrick does quite well as the almost unhinged, deeply cunning, and terribly wounded Jackie. She allows Jackie the possibility of sweetness if only someone would grant it her.

David Meglino cuts a fine figure as a kind of Mr. Slugworth, surreptitiously counseling Jackie on how to make a score. But the ironic distance Meglino shapes for Dennis ultimately turns to fascination and compassion as he sees more of Jackie. Brandi Andrade as Mary initially gains our sympathy in her honest assessment of her own side of the story. Yet she quickly repels us as Mary turns more and more merciless and devious. Brian Witcowicz’s Philip, like the shelves that surround him in his store, is somewhat dry and dusty, but when he bursts out, the dust tornadoes. Tony Martin as Sterling makes “fuck” sound like a hitherto unexplored word. The man bellows. If he gets that worked up about stamps, he’d massacre trespassers for touching anything bigger.

Mauritius can sometimes grow a bit tedious as it works out its kinks, but its overall effect skirts the mustily arcane. Rather, Rebeck touches on the profound inscrutability of what motivates her characters. Stamp-collecting is less about the errors that make stamps valuable and more about the errors that individualize her human subjects. A searing and dark study of the soul, Mauritius ends on a comic note. If its tone still puts us at something of a moral impasse, it nevertheless satisfies our desire to see justice met.