Stuck. Stuck on a small fishing boat with a malfunctioning outboard motor in the shallows of the Gulf of Mexico (that’s right, Mexico). Stuck in an intense, fraught relationship. Stuck in low-end jobs in the Alabama Delta country. In Audrey Cefaly’s The Gulf, now playing at the Nova Nightsky Theater, Kendra (Hannah Ruth Blackwell) and Betty (Sarah Baczewski) confront the implications of being unable to move.
The metaphorical gulf between them is evident from the outset. Betty is chatty, going on about a local lady and her 15 cats. She overshares. She seeks change. She dreams of attending a junior college 100 miles away, wanting more than the life of a small-town bartender. She doesn’t fish; she thinks tenderly about a fish heart that keeps beating after being cut out of the fish.
Kendra is taciturn, emotionally muted, matter-of-fact, setting about the practical business of catching, cleaning, and eating fish. She often enough tunes out her partner, bristling at Betty’s forays into self-improvement, skeptical of Betty’s notion that she might have a future as something other than a sewage plant worker. She resists change, not wanting to leave the life she has. She doesn’t read.
They are literally in the same boat, in Steph Blackwell’s set design, the well-constructed and delightfully named “Bridget’s Folly” (a nod to Talley’s Folly?). It’s not a comfortable place. In director Elyse R. Smith’s tight direction of the play, the characters are often at opposite ends of the boat. And the boat isn’t going anywhere. The ambient sound design (Smith, Adam Ressa, and Nate Eagle), quiet and pervasive, provides a contrast to the more turbulent emotions of the characters.
Betty and Kendra became powerfully attracted to each other at first sight, their moments of tenderness now adrift in a sea of anger, silences, betrayals, and cross-purposes. In talking about her play, Cefaly said what she wants to ask of the characters is, “How did you get so stuck…[and] what is the full cost of leaving?” Those are as much questions for the audience as they are for the characters.
Cefaly added, “When we love fully, we lose a part of ourselves. The Gulf leaves us wanting for Kendra and Betty what we want in our own lives. To find a way forward. To be understood. To “win.” So, perhaps Betty will find her freedom. And perhaps Kendra will find her moment of peace. Together or apart. They keep trying and the heart keeps beating.”
The characters’ ingrained responses to what frightens them make their longings difficult, if not impossible, to realize within their relationship. Yet here they are, still together/separate in a small boat.
In the intimate performance space that is one of Nova Nightsky’s strengths, Blackwell and Baczewski bring the details of their characters vividly to life, up close and personal. Theater doesn’t get more real, or complex characters more believable, than this.
One of the strengths of Cefaly’s script is that she avoids any tidy resolution, leaving her characters in the midst of their lives. A favorite line from Company comes to mind: “You always are/What you always were/Which has nothing to do with/All to do with her.”
Running Time: Approximately 75 minutes, with no intermission.
The Gulf plays through April 19, 2025, presented by NOVA Nightsky Theater performing at Falls Church Presbyterian Church, located at 225 E Broad St, Falls Church, VA. Tickets ($28, with a $0.70 service fee for General Admission) are available for purchase at the door or online.
The program is downloadable here.