Sex, described by its participants in the most graphic of terms, begins the recovery process for a young married couple in Jack Thorne’s The Solid Life Of Sugar Water, a provocative British two-hander made something quite special indeed when translated into American Sign Language and staged by Deaf West Theatre in its American Premiere.

It’s clear from the moment Phil (Tad Cooley) and Alice (Sandra Mae Frank), side by side in their marital bed, launch into their verbal blow-by-blow that something is different in their love-making this time round. Not only has Alice not washed much recently, this is their “first time since…”

Since when?

Before we learn the answer to that question, the couple flash back to the most delightful of meet-cutes. (The overstuffed care package he was mailing to his Africa-bound brother literally exploded as they waited in line at the post office.) Then there’s their first date. (Getting-to-know-you chitchat is rendered pretty much impossible when you’re seeing Spartacus in its 198-minute re-restored re-release.) Their art gallery third date, or as Phil describes it, “My kind of hell, because I spend the entire time thinking how long do I stare at this thing?” Their first time making love (to the romantic strains of Dire Straits “Romeo And Juliet” no less).

And then…

When The Solid Life Of Sugar Water debuted at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a hearing Phil and a deaf Alice conversed in spoken English, a skill the latter character had mastered along with the ability to read lips.

Without changing a word of Thorne’s script, the combination of ASL master Linda Bove’s sign-language translation and Thorne’s original dialog voiced by Nick Apostolina and Natalie Camunas ensure that both deaf and hearing audiences can enjoy and appreciate The Solid Life Of Sugar Water in equal if distinct measure.

More significantly, this “partner casting” allows its director’s imagination to truly take flight.

Randee Trablitz keeps Apostolina and Camunas hidden in the shadows when Phil and Alice describe their love-making, their amped voices providing simultaneous translation. During the post office scene and later on as well, the speaking pair stand in close proximity to the signing couple. There are even times that Phil and his partner and Alice and hers interact as if each were only half a complete being.

It’s an approach that yields multiple rewards, not the least of which is taking a good if not great play and turning it into something extraordinary.

Stunning young Broadway vet Frank, whose first language is ASL, and lanky, scruffy charmer Cooley, who only started learning ASL in his late teens, make for a dynamite pair in roles that take them from awkward if adorable first encounter to awkward if adorable first dates to the most gut-wrenching of personal tragedies, with plenty of explicit sex talk along the way. (Frank, in particular, is absolutely devastating in The Solid Life Of Sugar Water’s darkest moments.)

Apostolina (delivering Phil’s lines in a spot-on contemporary English accent) and Camunas (who plays Alice as American) are absolutely terrific too, sharing credit for characters made even richer by Deaf West’s trademark brand of double casting.

Scenic designer Sean Fanning’s mind-blowing set has us looking down from the ceiling to Phil and Alice’s bed below. (That being said, it would make more sense if Alice were elevated so as to look Phil straight in the eye.)

 Adding to the stage wizardry throughout are Derrick McDaniel’s moody, evocative lighting, a projection design by Heather Fipps whose many wonders include allowing Phil and Alice to be simultaneously in bed and elsewhere, and Adriana Lambarri’s just right costumes, with Noelle Hoffman’s atmospheric sound design adding the finishing touches for hearing audiences.

Julie Ouellette is production stage manager and Heather King is assistant stage manager. Justin Huen is technical director.

Short and bittersweet and powerful as all get-out, Deaf West’s The Solid Life Of Sugar Water packs one shattering punch. Don’t be surprised if it ends up being one of the year’s most acclaimed, talked-about productions.

Rosenthal Theater, Inner-City Arts, 720 Kohler Street, Los Angeles.
www.deafwest.org

–Steven Stanley
September 12, 2019
Photos: Brandon Simmoneau

Tags: Deaf West Theatre, Jack Thorne, Los Angeles Theater Review