“Red Light Winter” reveals more than flesh at White Box Theatre


It is hard to resist a play with a twist, and “Red Light Winter” seduces with repeated revelations when two old college friends do Amsterdam in more ways than one.

Adult in both language and nudity, Probationary Theatre’s new production indulges in graphic accounts and fleshy enactments of the two New Yorkers’ encounter with a prostitute on their pleasure-seeking trip.

Successful editor Davis plays the pal when he pays for Christina to service frustrated playwright Matt out of his suicidal depression. However, it soon emerges that he has already sampled the goods and the seedy deeds to follow are set to reveal much more than flesh.

The emotionally fraught back stories of the one-time friends, now in their 30s, emerge through their highly literary but bawdy banter.

One can only imagine what events unfolded on U.S. playwright Adam Rapp’s own trip to Amsterdam with a friend back in 1997. The play inspired by that experience premiered at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago in 2005 and was staged in New York City the following year. 

Matt’s self-conscious critique to Christina of his own work: “It’s not what you might call a well-made play,” could not be applied to this production. The X-rated content is smartingly witty, evoking bursts of uncomfortable laughter from the audience throughout.

This is more than just sex to hang a plot around. If anything, the characters are a little too laboriously outlined during the first act. Achilles Lakes’ robust performance immediately fingers Davis as the crass alpha male, and we understand Matt’s suicidal neurosis from first sight of him trying to hang himself with a belt from a hook on the ceiling.

We don’t quite need, therefore, so many repeats of Davis’ libidinous gesturing toward Christina or Matt’s anxiety to be stuttered out so many times.

So frequently displaying traits that were immediately clear causes the action to sag a little at times. The audience should be trusted to understand these folk, even with so much Amsterdam pot being waved around.

Christina takes a little longer to reveal herself as more than a mere tart with a heart. A moving vocal performance by Desriee Munro lifts her character into a new light. Australian-born Munro’s accents must be praised, as should her bravery for baring all for this role.

All the character-building of the top-heavy first half pays off to great effect in the end. The second act switches scene to Matt’s shoebox-sized Manhattan apartment, where the events of the previous year’s trip play out in dramatic and disturbing ways.

Christina has some troubling revelations, and Dominic Schiferl comes into his own post-interval, gaining confidence in the role of an ever more hopeless Matt,

Lakes’ Davis is as nasty as ever, as love given uninvited is inevitably unrequited. When history begins to repeat itself in cruel and artful ways, we ache with the fear that no one will ever get what they want or need.

Director Stephen Glaspie and his assistant Desiree Longworth have helped these actors stage a play that is dark, funny, and shocking. But a certain honesty lends these characters the solidity to make them highly relatable through the salacious plot.

From a sluggish start “Red Light Winter” picks up pace to become a tough but touching investigation of lives gone to seed.

By Kirsty Taylor (kirstyt@heraldcorp.com)

“Red Light Winter”

“Red Light Winter” will be staged at White Box Theatre near Hyochang Park Subway Station at 8 p.m. on June 22, 4 p.m and 8 p.m. on June 23, and 4 p.m. on June 24.

Next at White Box Theatre, “Gaucho,” the drama of an international drug smuggler confronted with his past, will play from July 13-22. For more information go to www.probationalrytheatre.com.