by Joel Elkins~

There is something to be said for truth in advertising.

Dialogue Between a Prostitute and Her Client, now playing at The Fremont Centre Theatre, can best be described, unsurprisingly, as a dialogue between a prostitute and her client. No misrepresentation. No bait and switch. Now, if only the characters were as forthcoming.

The play opens in the boudoirs of Manila, an evidently experienced and clearly world-weary prostitute. The set by Victoria Bellocq is simple and tasteful: a lone settee surrounded by red fabric-covered walls, adorned with empty frames. (More on that below). Manila has just picked up a much younger client, and the one-act (and essentially one-scene) play portrays what transpires between them over the next hour.

While she appears eager to move the process along, he seeks more romance, more stimulation. He suggests a number of fantasies for them to play out, many of which, disturbingly, come back to his mother. She is uncharacteristically resistant to any such role-playing, especially one where they share anything but a physical encounter. Despite her attempts to keep things strictly business, he starts to express the possibility of “feelings” for her, although one wonders, based on what he exposes of himself, what sort of psychological transference or overcompensation is taking place. However, we also learn from her periodic asides that she is fighting to maintain her hardened exterior, and even fortifying it, for fear of what might happen should she let down her defenses.

The script, while not brilliant, is exceptional for being true to itself and true to life. And, like life, it is complex. The characters are not easily defined stereotypes. There is no point where one can say, “Ah, now I see where s/he is coming from.” The characters reveal parts of themselves like flowing rivers, full of rapids and eddies and estuaries, all with individual personalities, yet combining to form a complex whole. When you think you’ve captured a piece, the waters flow downstream to reveal a different dynamic.

The beauty (and perhaps the frustration) of multi-dimensional characters is that they pose more questions than they answer. Here we are presented with two souls that are clearly troubled, and, as all of us, dealing with life the best way they know how. The playwright, Dacia Maraini, leaves it to the audience to speculate which is the more tortured, the woman who is forced to sell her body, or the man who finds it necessary to engage her services. Whose relationship with their surroundings is more “healthy,” whose world view more in touch with reality?

This brings us back to the empty frames on the walls. At the risk of overanalyzing, I can’t help but think that they are meant to be symbolic, of Manila’s emptiness inside, of the borders people erect around themselves in order to survive or of the fact that the world sees only these borders while the inner person remains inexorably hidden.

Dialogue is superbly acted. Francesca Fanti embodies the hardened prostitute, weathered and broken down by years of plying her trade. She dramatically adds 15 years to her appearance (and at one point in the play an addition 30) through nothing more than her facial expression. She has a pronounced European accept that somehow makes her seem more worldly and accentuates the vulgarity of the words she insists on using to the growing consternation of her client.

In a real Hollywood story, Eric Murdoch landed this leading role in his first few weeks since moving to LA from the East Coast, and gives a marvelous performance as the client, skillfully vacillating between the various facets of his character’s complex psyche, at times lecherous, misogynistic and domineering and at times sensitive and vulnerable. Murdoch is able to mold them into a single believable self.

Like a woman, Dialogue is emotionally complex and impulsively moody. But like a man it masks that emotion with aggression and hides it behind bravado and hubris. And like a man, it finishes quickly and abruptly, leaving one strangely unfulfilled, craving more.

Dialogue is directed by Mark Kemble, with lighting by Peter Strauss.

Dialogue Between a Prostitute and Her Client is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 3 pm through April 18, 2010

The Fremont Centre Theatre is located at 1000 Fremont Ave. (at El Centro) in South Pasadena.

Ticket prices: $25 (Students/Seniors: $20)

Reservations by phone (866) 811-4111, toll-free or on-line: www.FremontCentreTheatre.com