Venice Theatre

Venice stages poignant ‘Beast”

April 16, 2010
Jay Handleman, Herald-Tribune

While trying to move forward from the horrors of his past, an Armenian man stumbles and struggles on his way toward building a future in America.

In Richard Kalinoski’s beautiful and powerful play “Beast on the Moon,” Aram Tomasian is the lone survivor of a family beheaded in the Turkish genocide of its Armenian neighbors in the early 20th century.

He proudly displays a family portrait with all the heads cut out as a reminder of what happened and the hope that he will fill those holes with pictures of his new wife and future children. But Aram, a photographer like his father, may come to a different way of seeing things thanks to his young, mail-order bride, Seta, a child who was forced to grow up quickly because of her own family tragedy in Armenia.

How these two come together and co-exist is the heart of Kalinoski’s play, which gets a strong production by director Murray Chase in Venice Theatre’s Stage II series.
The dramatic pauses may be a bit overlong and unnecessarily add to the running time, but Chase has coaxed two fine and subtly nuanced performances from Nidal Zarour as Aram and Ally Tufenkjian as Seta that are far stronger than audiences may expect from a community theater production.

Both have grown up at the Venice Theatre and into these thought-provoking and moving roles. Zarour, who may be a bit young for the role, is still effective as the tradition-bound Aram, who knows how things should be in his home, even as he tries to figure out how to treat his young and innocent bride.

Tufenkjian counters with strong arguments of her own, bringing a young girl’s strength to a blossoming womanhood. Seta may be young, but her point of view about things large and small carries a lot of weight and indicates how time and events bring a shifting of traditions.

Jim Lovett injects a bit of drama as a narrator and observer to the life of the couple. Steven Junker brings a cocky …and playful spirit … to his role as a young orphan who comes into their lives.

The play is staged on a simple but evocative set by Kirk V. Hughes of three playing areas on sand-colored wood platforms.

There are moments that could be faster paced, but warmth, tenderness and tension flow in equal and welcome measures in this involving and often poetic play.