He's Not Heavy...

Yes, indeed, he is my brother.  In spite of the close resemblance, it is David, not me, here on this poster.  Not coincidentally, either, as he has the lead in this delightful, if slightly bloody pre-Elizabethan tragedy, called appropriately enough, The Spanish Tragedy.  Without mincing words or delaying my review, I will say that David's performance was excellent to say the least, and if you are to believe a reviewer who also happens to be his brother, he was inspired.

Now, that may not be the hyperbole you think it to be, for it happens that the subject of the play is one that struck me deeply and for good reason: It is about a father who seek revenge for his son's death.  Thus it is that there is a scene where David's character, Heironimo, grieves over the body of his freshly deceased son.

Now, though the son has been murdered, the emotion that surged through me as David bent down to caress his 'son's' face was the selfsame grief I felt on seeing Pierre lifeless in the hospital bed.  In spite of myself, in spite of the knowledge that it was 'only a play', I cried.  Lest you think that this is simply 'normal' consider the fact that I have not yet really wept openly since Pierre's death.  It is, I believe, through artifices such as drama that I may eventually come to resolve this tangle of emotion and grief, and I have my brother David to thank for this 'revelation.'

Knowing that actors must find a personal emotion to draw upon if they are to make that emotion felt to the audience allows me some satisfaction because it means that there is some use to the grief so long harbored in my heart.  In short, if others can derive some meaning from his death, even if they are not conscious that it is he for whom the grief is spent, then there is meaning in my loss.  The pain, though still great, is dispersed by such actions as may be seen in a stage play, which is thus placed into the stream of emotion felt by the human as a whole.

In a way wholly unexpected, yet perfectly natural as I here contemplate it, I find that I am healed--in part--by David's creative strength and the power of his performance.  I say natural because it seems that way when you watch him perform, yet it was unexpected because I did not realize till I saw and felt it on the stage last night, that David's gift has allowed for a return of my own angst to the collective consciousness we all share.