Review: Touch by Vestige Group
by Michael Meigs

The Vestige Group starts Touch at 9 p.m., under a tall tree in a street-side courtyard by an empty coffee shop on east Sixth Street.

At night the neighborhood has a deceptive air of abandonment. Both the warehouse across the street and Hot Mama's Espresso sit within a tight triangle of railroad tracks near modest apartment buildings. Traffic is sporadic on Sixth Street, just behind the row of plywood partitions.

Touch is quiet but focused. Though there's a cast of four, this piece is principally a monologue by Andrew Varenhorst. He portrays Kyle, an already introspective man driven further inside himself by the loss of his Zoë, the wife whom he adored.

This staging is an eerie experience, as if the audience were posted somewhere deep within Kyle's head. He goes obsessively over their meeting, their life together, the blank catastrophe of her disappearance and his discovery of her six weeks later in the New Mexico desert.

"Zoë" or "Zoe" is Greek for "life." Kyle's relation makes clear that from the moment that she chose him in high school, the extravagant, attractive Zoë became his life, transforming his outcast existence, motivating him and animating him. We never see Zoë or directly hear her in this piece. That absence entirely shapes the narrative.  Kyle's monologue is interrupted periodically by re-enactments, as if we were reliving with him other, non-Zoë episodes from his life. 

Some of these involve his friendship from a young age with Benny, a bright, loud Italian who was equally a misfit in high school. Kyle went on through school and became an astronomer, intent on the unreachable beauty of the universe, while Benny became a physician.

Kyle relates to us how Zoë went missing from a spontaneous late-night trip to the local grocery. We witness efforts by Kyle and Benny to find her and then to enlist the assistance of the indifferent authorities. The story of Zoë is traced in, but it remains largely unknowable. Playwright Press-Coffman twists the tension increasingly tighter as the search goes on.

Touch is an affecting portrayal of loss. Because it offers no resolution for its protagonist, the audience is left with more questions and concerns than reassurance. Press-Coffman does not fill in histories other than that of Kyle and Zoë -- for example, we have little sense of Benny or Kyle's careers or professions. They remain suspended in the buddyship of adolescence. The character of Zoë's sister Serena is particularly sketchy, through no fault of Evelyn LaLonde who plays her.

These panels of vagueness might be defended by referring to the narrative form - - we are inside Kyle's head and we perceive only what he gives us. For him, Zoë and Benny were the only points of reference in his universe.

Andrew Varenhorst delivers this role with restraint, subtlety and conviction.  Over the past year Varenhorst has captured attention and applause in comic roles of great energy, both with the Vestige Group and elsewhere. Here he shows that he has impressive depth, as well.

The audience is limited to twenty persons per evening, a staging decision that maintains the intimacy of the production.  My thanks go to director Susie Gidseg and the cast for letting me attend the final dress rehearsal, a generous concession on their part.

Jennymarie Jemison's comments on playing Kathleen, from her blog "Austin Actress," June 22 

Review by Barry Pineo in the Austin Chronicle, June 25 

Review by Dan Solomon at Austinist.com, June 25 

Review by Sean Fuentes at Austin Theatre Review, June 26 

EXTRAS

YouTube video

Click for program for Touch by Vestige Group 

Touch
by Toni Press-Coffman
Vestige Group