On the Exhale by Martin Zimmerman, Theater With a View, Pottstown PA, July 2018.
On the Exhale is a disturbing play. It’s a great vehicle for its solo performer, in this case Nina Covalesky, the artistic director of Theater With a View, a company launched in Philadelphia’s western suburbs in 2014 for the outdoor production of contemporary plays.
This summer’s offering is a departure in two ways. First, the script does not suggest the backyard of a comfortable house in a wooded area. Second, the production does not involve a company of actors as in previous years. Yet the subject matter is so provocative that it makes the choice interesting.
The performer is a women’s studies professor at an unspecified college. She has a son in second grade who is the product of a donor’s sperm. In the opening scene she makes clear that she’s uninterested in the efforts of acquaintances to match her up with available men, nor is she interested in women. Not only is she friendless; she resents the efforts of co-workers to get close to her. She has grievances against her college’s “inhumane” curriculum. She also is fearful that some unstable male student might come gunning for her.
When a man breaks into her town’s elementary school and her son is one of the murdered children, our protagonist retreats further into isolation. She decides to visit the store where the perpetrator bought his weapon and she buys the exact model automatic rifle. Instead of joining a movement to ban guns, she embraces them. The gun becomes her best friend — indeed, her only friend.
The title of the play comes from the instructions she receives about how to shoot: breathe deeply and squeeze the trigger “on the exhale.”
Playwright Martin Zimmerman’s look into the feelings of a gun owner is intriguing, but his script is full of holes. Chief among them: The woman drives a carpool on a day-trip to the state capitol where these people will testify on the subject of gun control. After the hearing, she stays in that city to hang out in a bar frequented by a pro-gun legislator, and subsequently follows him back to his home for a sexual encounter. What ever happened to the people in her carpool?
The confrontation scene with the legislator is unconvincing melodrama. The woman’s many fears and hostilities are not sufficiently explored. Also, we failed to hear the woman’s testimony on the subject of guns. That speech could have been the centerpiece of the play. These flaws, of course, are in the script and Covalesky is not responsible for them. She does a fine job of conveying her character’s feelings. She keeps our attention in her grip, up close, for more than an hour, and that is a significant achievement. Elaina Di Monaco directed with appealing simplicity.