Wipeout at Rivendell Theater

Or: Life’s a Beach, Enjoy the Ride.

How do you set a play on the water? Aurora Real De Asua’s new work takes place entirely on the ocean off the beach of Santa Cruz as three women in their seventies: cautious Claudia (Celeste Williams), gung-ho Gary (Cindy Gold) and dyspeptic Wynn (Meg Thalken), go surfing for the first time, under the instruction of Blaze (Glenn Obero), quintessential ocean-side youth.

On Caitlyn Girten’s elegant ocean scape set the cast paddle around on rolling surfboards, slide on ramping waves. It should look very silly, but under the direction of Tara Mallon, and the etherial magic of the set, the rolling castors become the roll of waves. (Also, dear reader, though I normally despise projections in stage shows, I would be remiss in not acknowledging Andres Fiz, whose illuminated backdrop gives us a sense of expanse and, when Real De Asua’s script demands, sublimity).

The script calls for sublimity quite a lot, both on the personal and oceanic levels. Gary, Wynn, and Claudia have a lifetime of stories for each other, and even (as we discover) if that tight weave is fraying, they can still play off and bring out the best in each other. The story triangulates between them as one by one they go off with Blaze into the line up, the elements of each character sparking and fizzing off the others. The ladies and Blaze each have their own voice but the play’s wit, dirty and eloquent and exact, surges through all of them. The howl in your seat jokes are just the kind of smart comments any of us could make on a good day, all the more true and real for their irregular edges.

There’s also great sweeps of loss to be found here. Obero perfectly models how young and how gentle Blaze is, still deeply hurt, still slightly out of his depth, but dedicated to doing the right thing. One of the most tender moments is his not quite face off with Claudia, a teacher who can’t quite fathom his off the grid life. It’s a beautiful moment of understatement from Williams especially, who balances Claudia’s desperation with gentleness and grace, and sets up for the riptide later in the show. Thalken too carefully carves Wynn’s grief and prickliness into barbed points, while showing us the squish able grief at her center, while Gold’s tenacious Gary, full of breathless stories and howls, keep the play racing on.

Wipeout is a play about agency, about empowering yourself to stand up: on your board, or to your life, or to the inevitable. It’s a rare and wonderful thing for three women in their seventies to be quite so unfettered on the stage and as an audience we are richer and better off for seeing all of them: the wise and honey and the bitter and strong. There are moments in Real De Asua’s play that are absolutely transcendent, sweeping us up in a wave of feeling, and we don’t know if we’ll come out of it wrecked or upright, but goodness what a ride it is.