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Problems are solved right 'Here'

Communication problems led Othello to strangle his blushing bride Desdemona and pushed the miserable divorce-bound couple in "War of the Roses" to murder each other. In this long tradition of communication breakdowns comes Michael Frayn's "Here," which revolves around a couple that fights over where to move items of furniture, among other things.

"Here" focuses on a couple named Cath and Phil at two stages in their lives -- as a young couple moving into their first apartment, and as an older couple moving into a bigger apartment. The actors who play the younger couple (Aric Knuth and Jamie Saginor) and the actors who play the older couple (Jon Berry and Sophina Brown) are onstage together during the show, but "of course they never interact," said director Allison Tkac.

"Here" is a reference to the problems that arise between the couple at both stages -- not only questions about money and children, but trivial debates about what goes here and there, about where to place a chair in an apartment.

It is these communication problems between couples that are the primary themes of "Here." Tkac said, "I think that cooperation, and love, how couples decide things, how couples grow together or apart: Those types of basic couples issues are the crux of the play. They're just basic ideas of communicating to someone you love that everyone knows about and that everyone can see a part of themselves in."

"Here" is darker than Frayn's best-known comedies, such as the backstage farce "Noises Off." "These people live nice lives, but there's something very tragic about their miscommunication. They have problems because they really love each other and it's obvious that they were meant to love each other," Thac continued.

Cath and Phil also have problems communicating on a sexual level. They keep letting their neighbor, an older widow played by Ellen Dobrin, interrupt their foreplay. This, Tkac said, is a huge road sign to their communication problems.

Besides the mental and sexual sparring, there is some out-and-out brawling, as love becomes a battlefield for the beleaguered couple. "These are some pretty physical people," Tkac said. In one of the show's several choreographed fight scenes, the couple decides to fight it out in order to reach some trivial decision. "It's an almost comic moment, because the woman who is cast as the older Cath is a lot smaller than her counterpart and she throws him across the room. She whips his ass," Tkac said.

The show's themes of communication and love should greatly appeal to college students, who, Tkac said, will see much of themselves in "the very likable and sympathetic" Cath and Phil. "I don't think anyone has had the absolutely perfect relationship that they can't understand what these characters are going through."

Tkac said she'd be really interested to see couples' reactions to the show, and said that it could be a very healthy therapeutic experience. "I think it could encourage them to talk about a lot of things. I really do see a lot of things that happen to these characters replayed in relationships I've had, (as well as) in other people's relationships."

Springtime will soon be upon us, and April come she will. Couples will be cooing to each other on the Diag. Who knows -- perhaps those particularly happy-looking couples will have been the ones to have seen "Here," reversing the downward spiral of communication breakdown to the point where they look as happy as the squirrels lolling around underneath the Ann Arbor sky.