The choices you make, or at times feel like you are forced to make, may have fleeting repercussions or lifelong consequences. And Abby must face the reality of paying for law school, no matter what it takes to fulfill her dream. Maybe it was her troubled childhood with a widowed mother constantly bringing different men into her home that led her down this path.
We meet the sugar daddy right at the outset, an ultra-successful married man with two children, who speaks like an Oxford professor of Literature and has no patience for bad food or cheap wine. Abby and one of her male roommates, James Gould, declare their hidden love for each other in the next scene. Can Abby maintain this double life, being a kept woman while developing a burgeoning romance with the true love of her life? Hoke uses grandiose yet poetic language when Grant Parrish speaks, making his character pretentious at the outset, but also adding to the overall cunning that befits an adulterer.
Greg Howze seems to be relishing this role of a man who controls and gets everything he wants, molding Abby ala Henry Higgins. Her lectures her on her bouts of bad behavior, rages of raw emotions and unpolished edges. Zoe Gonez plays Abby as naive, but not dumb. She needs love, overnight companionship, financial and emotional support, yet freedom to love that man of her choice. Johnny Barden languishes as James, a lone wolf who has never been in love, and beats himself up to find a muse to transform his technical talent into something artistically satisfying.
He will inscribe the anonymous confessions of others onto his art, all for the art world to ponder. Barden is simply great, full of angst, enthusiasm, and raw emotions that come from a first love.
Gonez and Howze are achingly convincing in their own raw portayals, and when Barden finally is in on their story, the emotions are intense. Can any of these three ever attain happiness knowing what has brought them to this point? The ultimate answer is a surprise that really should not have been shocking, yet was. Something wonderful happens when as an audience you try to understand the complicated mindset of each character, asking what you would do in such a situation, where each character has something major to gain, yet also to lose.
