Windowmen

Play (2012)
by Steven Barkhimer

With Alex Pollock (Ken), Will Lyman (Al), Nael Nacer (Rocco), Daniel Berger-Jones (Lester), Brandon Whitehead (Vic)

Ken (Alex Pollock) is a young man right out of college trying to support himself with an interim job at the Fulton Fish Market. He enters into the company of Al (Will Lyman) who owns and runs a fish sales office at the market and Vic (Brandon Whitehead), who is the principal “windowman,” or trade manager, for it. The office is frenetically busy with selling fish , but there is also, hidden in the mix, a certain amount of otherwise fishy activity.

I had the opportunity to see a staged reading of an earlier draft of this play at the Boston Theater Marathon, sponsored by the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, in May of this year. It was, in that earlier version, a very good play and had, at the time, the benefits of some of its talented acting roster, notably superb Boston area veteran actor Will Lyman.

The current version at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre is even better. Playwright Steven Barkimer has sculpted and shaped the narrative, adding important shading, particularly in the final scenes.

In addition to being a comic romp, the play is a complex and subtle moral tale woven within the the quick repartee and frenetically kinetic goings on at the window of the fish trading office. Money is disappearing and Al wants to know where it’s going.

Ken, the new, young guy, is put on the spot and finds himself right in the middle of a complex series of manipulations and compromises that drive the central characters.

Corruption frequently occurs in such situations and the question Barkhimer’s play raises is how to judge the characters who are touched by it. Culpability arises here in a practical setting and the curiosity of the play’s concern is to try to treat of moral dilemmas that have no clear edges. Given that in a complex environment many are blameworthy, the real question becomes who, among those, is more extremely so and who is less so, and, recognizing that distinction, what is the ethically elevated way to deal with those differences.

This analysis of sorts comes along with a lot of funny schtick; one comes out feeling that, while one’s moral sensibilities have been stimulated, one has also had a good time doing so.

Playwright Steven Barkhimer is a talented comic actor seen frequently on the Boston stage; that wry, clownish sense he often so capably exhibits as an actor also rises up clearly in his writing.

The cast is exceptionally capable.

Will Lyman is superb and goes the distance in conveying the complexities of motivation and judgement that drive Al’s concerns and his sensibilities. Lyman is like a great instrumentalist who takes a beautifully written sonata and transforms it with his own genius. It is remarkable to watch him work.

Alex Pollock does a great job as the ingenue and recent college graduate in philosophy (a comic setup which Lyman’s Al gets much room to riff on), conveying a conscientious diligence and appropriately earnest moral confusion which is perfect for the part.

Brandon Whitehead (Vic), as the schlubby long-time windowman who takes Ken under his wing, brings to the stage an energetic gruffness and unrestrained guttural exuberance that fits the part beautifully.

Two excellent young actors, Nael Nacer (Rocco) and Daniel Berger-Jones (Lester) ably fill out the cast with supporting roles.

Having initiated this project through his own experience working, as a young man, in the Fulton Fish Market in New York, Steven Barkhimer has framed the exuberant and sometimes very funny give and take in an office of men on the move and on the take, and crafted, out of that interesting capture of voice and humor, a narrative that is philosophically subtle and interesting.

Though, in the end, it still does not answer all its moral questions, it goes quite a bit of the way towards doing so and gives a satisfying account of how, at least, in morally complex situations, one even begins to consider adequate resolutions.

– BADMan