Forgiving the unforgivable

A one-man exploration of anger

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The trickiest part about The Tricky Part, Martin Moran’s 2004 Obie Award-winning play, was for Moran to tell the true story of the years of sexual abuse he endured as a child in a way that was both honest and accessible. Moran succeeded in that and, amazingly, also managed to make The Tricky Part a remarkably warm, often humorous production.

Ten years later, the Denver native has returned to his hometown to perform his new one-man show, All The Rage, which is a companion piece, a sequel of sorts, to The Tricky Part. But where The Tricky Part had as its focus the abuse itself and its direct impact on Moran’s life, All The Rage takes a broader, funnier look at the nature of anger and the value of empathy. The play is certainly informed by the violations that occurred to Moran in his youth, but it refuses to dwell on them. Instead, it uses them as a springboard to an explication of some very universal issues.

He begins All The Rage by introducing the audience to his father’s wife — Moran could never quite find his way to calling her his stepmother. In just a few highly descriptive sentences, Moran brings the woman to full, red-haired, makeup-encrusted, chain-smoking life. Though the two shared a mutual, carefully cultivated antipathy, when the moment comes for Moran to release all the years of pent up frustration and hidden hostility, he’s moved to reach out in love rather than in wrath.

Later, Moran recounts his experience acting as an interpreter for a young African man seeking asylum in the United States. Through no fault of his own, this young man was imprisoned and suffered horrendous torture at the hands of the local junta until he escaped Shawshank-style through a drainage pipe. He was then forced to leave his wife and child behind to an uncertain fate in order to flee to America and the hope of a better life for both him and them.

Through it all, the refugee maintains a quiet hopefulness and a sincere appreciation for the opportunities available in the U.S. Moran, like most of us, wonders at the man’s resilience and goes so far as to question him about it. The man replies simply that though he carries his wife and child with him in his heart, he cannot grieve for their absence perpetually for to do so would be to drown in sorrow. And if he drowns in sorrow, he will surely never see them again.

Moran presents All The Rage using
a mixed-gen multimedia format that, thankfully, enhances rather than
detracts from the material. When the play is at its most travelogue, he
employs a globe as well as paper maps of Africa and New York City to
orient the audience. When he wishes to emphasize a certain point or
illustrate a particular reference, he uses an overhead projector not
reliant on transparencies.

The bells and whistles are well and good, but as with any one-man show All The Rage lives or dies on Moran’s performance, and he holds the audience’s rapt attention with ease.

Whether he’s dropping a punchline or belting out a few bars from Spamalot (it
makes sense in context), you can’t take your eyes off of him and you
can’t wait to hear what he’ll say next. The material he’s written and
the way in which he conveys it are so engaging, so engrossing, that he
even gets a big laugh when he recycles the old joke, “Jesus is coming.
Look busy!” The only criticism I have of All The Rage is that it
sometimes comes dangerously close to committing the cardinal sin of any
autobiographical one-man show, the sin of self-aggrandizement. Moran
admits to actually having felt anger only a few times during the play,
and with a single exception he finds a way, Christlike, to turn the
other cheek. The one time that he doesn’t it’s not as if he loses
himself in a fit of rage; he merely yells at a cabbie who nearly ran him
over. The Incredible Hulk he is not.

If
Moran were to own his anger more — even just once during the show — I
believe it would greatly increase the play’s already significant impact.
Alternately, if he discussed in more detail the ways in which he has
learned to let go of his rage and to embrace a more compassionate
worldview, perhaps that would pull him back from the brink of
self-appointed sainthood that he sometimes seems to be teetering on.

With that said, All The Rage is a tour de force, and as an added bonus, during its run Moran will also perform The Tricky Part a handful of times.

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