Julie James and Mike Ryan star in 'Hello and Goodbye,' at Center Stage through March 18. (Steve DiBartolomeo)
Johnny’s face and shiny head are drenched with sweat as the frantic middle-aged character pleas with his older sister to stay out of their father’s bedroom. There, Johnny fears she might uncover one of the family’s last remaining secrets—that their father isn’t even there.
In a play marked by crescendos of mounting tension, Johnny, a socially awkward, stocky man played by Shakespeare Santa Cruz regular Mike Ryan, is seeing his sister for the first time in 15 years. He’s slow to let his guard down.
In Jewel Theatre Company’s gripping production of Athol Fugard’s Hello and Goodbye, Johnny’s sister Hester (Julie James) has returned to the family home to try and sort through her half of the family’s inheritance after hearing her father is in failing health. As the two pick through boxes of clothes and photographs, what Johnny is afraid to tell her—and she doesn’t realize—is that their father died a few days earlier of natural causes.
While Johnny tries to hide the painful truth, the two characters piece together their tumultuous childhoods, searching through suitcases and cardboard boxes. Johnny brings armfuls of boxes out of their father’s bedroom—always closing the door behind him. Hester is looking frantically for some cash to give her the financial boost she says she needs. She sits on the kitchen floor searching for the money and finding everything else instead, like old shoes their late mother’s dress.
With only two actors and no scene changes, the 1965 South African play may sound as simple as butter and toast, but that wouldn’t do it any justice. From the breakfast nook—where the play opens with Johnny nervously hitting a spoon against his glass jar once every second—the play travels to new and interesting places without ever leaving the kitchen.
Thanks to outstanding performances from both Ryan and James, the two siblings evolve, undergoing big but believable transformations over a very short timespan. The audience is up close and personal for it, too. The intimate 88-person Center Stage theater feels small enough to be a living room to the stage’s adjoining kitchen.
The two siblings are not just reminiscing and arguing about the past. They are trying to decide whether or not to trust each other. At the dawn of the second act, Johnny’s nervousness temporarily disappears, and for brief moments he appears confident and sure of himself. Hester, though, is slow to shed her bitterness.
The dialogue in Hello and Goodbye is excellent—at times morbidly hilarious and often profound. The play’s lines are introspective in nature and rich with symbolism. Searching for her identity in the first act, Hester takes out a hand-held mirror to ask her brother if he thinks she aged well. “What do I really look like now?” she asks Johnny. “I can’t see myself. Mirrors don’t work. I can’t watch.”
Somehow amidst the lying and disagreeing, the play and its characters emerge triumphant. Maybe it’s catharsis, or maybe it’s because the acting is just that good. Hello and Goodbye chronicles the brief window of time shared between siblings who used to be two of the most important people in each other’s lives. Now they barely recognize each other. As Hester empties one secret-filled cardboard box after another, and reclusive Johnny keeps bringing more out, they find that often a family’s deepest secrets aren’t in hidden boxes at all. Sometimes they’re buried within the family itself.
HELLO AND GOODBYE
Through Mar. 18
Center Stage, 1001 Center St, Santa Cruz
Tickets $28 Students/Seniors $23 at 831.425.7506 or jeweltheatre.net
