A humble home in Texas offers a border patrol officer and his wife a certain type of life, albeit not the brightest one. The dim light that guides their delicate and fractured lives grows brighter with the arrival of the officer's son from a previous marriage, and the events that follow the son's arrival ignite a match that threatens to set fire to all three lives.
Company One's production of Suzan−Lori Park's "The Book of Grace" gives an intimate glimpse of one family's proclivity to write its own laws and the dangerous dance around boundaries that results as a consequence. Directed by David Wheeler, the production produces moments of sweet intimacy and horrific honesty.
The tension begins with the anticipation of the son's arrival. The son, Buddy (Jesse Tolbert), is an unemployed young man, honorably discharged from the military a few years ago. At the invitation of Grace (Frances Idlebrook), his father's new wife, Buddy returns to his hometown to attend the ceremony honoring his father for single−handedly stopping a van of illegal immigrants. Buddy's return is not as readily welcomed by his father, Vet (Steven Barkhimer), who gives Buddy a pat down upon his arrival.
As Buddy asserts before entering his father's home, the past can be forgiven, but not forgotten, and it is clear that neither party has forgotten everything. Buddy's past includes implied sexual abuse from his father, yet what Vet remembers are the times Buddy acted out, putting firecrackers in his car. After a decade, the tension between the two persists, with Vet doing terrible things to Buddy and never admitting it and Buddy lashing out violently as a result.
Vet is the source of the play's uncontrolled violence and its rigid boundaries. Aware of his dark past life filled with domestic abuse and fights, Vet sets out to create a fresh start. At a glance it appears that he has — Vet has a job and home that suit him. Unfortunately for Grace and Buddy, the better world that Vet has set up for himself does not necessarily include them. Grace is confronted with the same hole in the backyard that Buddy's mother faced, potentially a prepared grave by Vet set to remind her of what he could do to her, and Buddy finds himself without his father's assistance in getting a job with the border patrol.
Barkhimer does an excellent job of portraying Vet as the selfish and overbearing presence on the stage. Vet is easy to both dislike and believe in. His insistence on controlling those around him is as clear as his obsession with the border fence and the creases in his uniform. Keeping the world contained according to his own rules is Vet's first and foremost priority. Barkhimer makes a performance out of Vet's containment — the man on the couch drinking his beer and watching porn remains fascinating because the audience is always aware of the volatile nature that lies beneath the surface.
Just as easily as Vet irons out the wrinkles in his uniform, he erases his bad deeds from his memory, leaving Buddy and Grace to struggle and deal with them. But deal with them they can't. Buddy, even after changing his name to Snake, is still a boy afraid of his father. Grace is a child stuck in an adult's body with an overly optimistic and simple perspective on life, as Buddy's nickname for her, Good Gracious Grace, reveals.
Buddy is never able to physically confront Vet, and his most dramatic and bold statements are instead made to his video camera. Buddy's violence depends on explosive weapons, showing that he has not matured greatly from his youth. What were once firecrackers are now grenades, but Buddy's dependence on explosives reveals that he is still unable to directly confront his father. Buddy's inferior position and adolescent qualities are reinforced through Tolbert's performance. He turns Buddy into a gangly, nimble and less believable ex−soldier. Compared to Vet's calm, terrifying personality, Buddy never comes off as threatening, leaving Vet's assertion that he and Buddy have much in common lying flat on the stage.
Dangerously stuck between father and son is Grace, with the book that she's been writing hiding beneath the floorboards of the living room. The book, aptly titled "The Book of Grace," reveals the simple goodness that Grace hopes for in the world.
Yet the fact that Grace has to hide her book, and the good that she catalogs within it, is a telling symbol of the play's larger story. To wish for love and happiness is a risky business for Grace, as well as for the audience watching the performance. But just because the book is hidden, the emotions going into it are not, and that human element is truly the show's saving grace.
