Weighed in the water: ALT's 'Red Speedo' focuses on fraternal ambition, pressures of competition

Money is the fantasy chlorine in the swimming pool of American aspirations. All four characters in "Red Speedo," an absorbing one-act play by Lucas Hnath, seek subsidized fulfillment while dragging behind them anchors of dependency amid visions of personal wealth.

Chief among them is Ray, a competitive swimmer with Olympic possibilities dangling in front

Cody Miley as Ray contemplates what's next.

of him. But Ray (Cody Miley) has a disturbing history with illicit drugs, and his brother Peter (Alex Oberheide), a lawyer entangled in his own desires, wants to be his professional representative on the big world stage of swimming success. 

That's focused on the swimwear sponsorship summed up in the play's title. And that depends on his making the U.S. team, of course, which unfortunately is a goal that for him seems to rely on doping. It's upended his relationship with a drug-compromised ex-girlfriend, Lydia (Paige Elisse), and involved him in an ethical conflict with his Coach (Drew Vidal) at a financially struggling swim club.

American Lives 'Theatre opened its production of "Red Speedo" Thursday night at Phoenix Theatre's Russell Stage, where it will run through February 16. Directed by Chris Saunders, the show requires a compact version of a pool center-stage front — a kind of fifth character in the deus ex machina tradition of classical theater. Maybe it's "a devil from the machine" as well, as is confirmed by a superbly staged, violent last scene.

Matt Mott's set design approximates the clean, bright, functional atmosphere of the natatorium setting, with Laura Glover's lighting and Ben Dobler's imaginative sound design (loud buzzers mark scene changes and underline the menace of the action) filling out the picture.

Peter makes his point clear to Coach.

The dialogue style projects the two brothers' characters in particular. Fidgety and hyperactive, Oberheide's Peter is a wound-up alpha male type, hitting the stage in passionate advocacy of his brother to the Coach, who's trying to protect his business against rumors of drug use. Ray seems blameless, but his obsession with swimming is a mask. It helps him to appear rather dense, a dumb-jock stereotype. 

Miley amusingly projects this quality until Ray gets wise to his brother's manipulation and finds a source of leverage in information he gets from Lydia, whom he persuades to reappear in his life because she's (in drug terms) his connection. Paige Elisse showed a canny self-protectiveness in her performance as a suspended sports therapist.

Continual revelations characterize the writing. The characters interrupt each other, treading on one another's heels conversationally. It's "I know what you're going to say so I'm just going to break in here." It's sort of the style of the current hearings on Trump's cabinet picks, and the cast masters it well. It's especially rewarding to take in Miley's mastery of a speaking role, after having admired for years his acting prowess as a member of Dance Kaleidoscope, most recently in "Nothing Is Forever, Darling." 

Though not slavishly parallel to the Cain and Abel story in Genesis, "Red Speedo" echoes it in secularizing the trigger of fraternal enmity. Cain's sacrifice to God is rejected, but Abel, who offers the firstlings of his flock, finds favor. Just as Peter chooses the more readily available path to worldly success, while resenting it, Ray's choice is in a significant sense purer, because swimming is the only thing he knows.

"If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door," God warns Cain, who's predictably stirred to fratricide, then famously denies knowing where Abel is: "Am I my brother's keeper?" 

Corrupted by drugs and selfishness, the lines of responsibility are blurrier in Hnath's story. Though Peter has indeed been his brother's keeper, there's fragile, mutual propping up, which makes that last scene more of a resolution than it at first appears. As a result, the play's audiences are likely to sit there stunned and theatrically waterboarded. 

[Photos: Indy Ghost Light]