Eric Coble's The Velocity of Autumn
Is a Fierce and Funny Battle Over an
80-Year-Old Woman's Independence

RedBird Theater Company opens its production of Eric Coble's The Velocity of Autumn with a deceptively simple situation: an aging mother has barricaded herself inside her Brooklyn brownstone, her adult children want her out, and the son that she has not seen in years climbs through an upstairs window to try to talk some sense into her. What follows is much more than a family argument. It is a tense, funny, and often moving examination of aging, independence, memory, resentment, and the complicated ways that families try to care for one another.

This production, directed by Adam Traylor, stars Lenore Field as Alexandra and David Berberian as her estranged son, Chris. The play is essentially a sustained conversation between the two of them, giving both actors very little room to hide. For approximately 85 minutes, with no intermission, the audience remains with mother and son in Alexandra's second-floor living room as old grievances, family secrets, and unexpected moments of tenderness gradually emerge.

Both Field and Berberian deliver tour-de-force performances. They are mesmerizing together, each fully inhabiting the emotional complexity of these two wounded, funny, stubborn, deeply human people. Their work shifts effortlessly from biting humor to anger, tenderness, fear, and vulnerability, often in the space of a few lines. What makes the performances so compelling is not simply their intensity, but their truthfulness. Neither actor reaches for easy sentiment or broad effect; instead, they create characters who feel startlingly real. Watching them spar, retreat, reveal, and reconnect is the heart of the production; and together Berberian and Field turn a two-character family drama into something riveting.

Alexandra is no passive elderly woman, waiting for her children to decide her future. She is an artist, fiercely intelligent, stubborn, theatrical, and determined to remain in control of her life. She has fortified the house and, more alarmingly, armed herself with homemade Molotov cocktails. Her threat may at first seem almost comic, but Coble steadily reveals the fear underneath it: Alexandra knows that control over her own life is slipping away, and she is determined to resist that loss by whatever means remain available to her.

Lenore Field brings considerable Triangle theater experience to the role. She has worked with area companies for roughly three decades and has previously appeared with RedBird in A Doll's House, Part 2 and Girlfriends' Guide to the White House. Her regional credits also include productions with PlayMakers Repertory Company, Burning Coal Theatre Company, Manbites Dog Theater, and Honest Pint Theatre Company. Earlier this year, she played multiple roles in Burning Coal's production of My Fair Lady; and this summer, she played the leading role as Queen Elizabeth I at The ArtsCenter of Carrboro in the first production of Still She Stands.

The Velocity of Autumn, stars Lenore Field as Alexandra and David Berberian as Chris (photo by Alex Maness Photography)

Opposite Field is David Berberian as Chris, the son who has been away for 20 years and returns as an unlikely negotiator between Alexandra and the rest of the family. Berberian has been a familiar presence on Triangle stages for more than two decades, working as an actor, director, producer, designer, and set builder. His credits include Manbites Dog Theater, Duke Theater Studies, StreetSigns, Deep Dish Theater Company, Theater Delta, and numerous other organizations. He was a company member at Manbites Dog from 2001 until the company closed in 2018 and continues to work with Theater Delta, which uses interactive theater to encourage discussion around social issues. Triangle audiences may also remember Berberian from RedBird's encore production of Yasmina Reza's ART earlier this year at Bay 7 in Durham, where he played the often frantic and increasingly exasperated Yvan opposite Jock Brocki and Derrick Ivey.

The strength of The Velocity of Autumn lies in the changing balance between Chris and Alexandra. At first, Alexandra appears to hold all the power. Chris has literally entered her territory through a window; and she keeps him off balance with sarcasm, evasions, and unpredictable shifts of mood. Yet Chris has his own history with the family and his own reasons for having stayed away. As the evening progresses, the confrontation becomes less about which person can win and more about whether they can finally understand each other.

Eric Coble's script repeatedly mixes humor with genuine danger. Alexandra can be enormously funny, particularly when puncturing the assumptions of her adult children; but the play never allows us to forget what is at stake. Beneath the jokes are difficult questions: When does concern become control? When does independence become dangerous stubbornness? How much authority should adult children have over an aging parent? And what happens when the parent understands perfectly well what others are trying to do but refuses to cooperate?

Those questions have helped give the play a substantial life since its premiere. The Velocity of Autumn was first produced by Boise Contemporary Theater in 2011, with Mary Portser as Alexandra and Matthew Cameron Clark as Chris. The play later reached Broadway, opening at the Booth Theatre on April 21, 2014, directed by Molly Smith and starring Estelle Parsons and Stephen Spinella. Parsons received a Tony Award® nomination for Best Actress in a Play for her performance.

RedBird's production is especially well suited to an intimate theater setting. This is not a play driven by spectacle. Its explosions are mostly verbal and emotional -- although the bottles of gasoline sitting around Alexandra's house make the possibility of a more literal explosion impossible to ignore. Director Adam Traylor has a two-person drama in which timing, listening, and small shifts in emotional temperature matter enormously. The staging with audiences on both sides, created a visual ping-pong match between the two, which highlighted the shifts in power nicely.

RedBird Theater Company's production of The Velocity of Autumn, stars Lenore Field as Alexandra (photo by Alex Maness Photography)

The result is a play about aging that refuses to make aging its only subject. Alexandra and Chris are also a mother and son who have hurt each other, misunderstood each other, and missed years of each other's lives. Their struggle over where Alexandra will live gradually becomes something broader: a reckoning with the distance that can grow inside families and the limited time available to repair it.

This production features Field and Berberian under Traylor's direction, with scenic design by Derrick Ivey and JJ Bauer serving as stage manager and dramaturg.

At its heart, The Velocity of Autumn asks a question many families eventually face: How do we protect someone we love without taking away the very independence that makes that person who they are? Coble offers no easy answer. Instead, he gives us two complicated people in one room, each trying desperately to hold onto something that time has already begun to change.

RedBird Theater Company's production of The Velocity of Autumn, stars David Berberian as Chris (photo by Alex Maness Photography)

Eric Coble's THE VELOCITY OF AUTUMN (In Person at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 19th and 20th), directed by Adam Traylor and starring David Berberian as Chris and Lenore Field as Alexandra (RedBird Theater Company at the The ArtsCenter of Carrboro). REELS: https://www.facebook.com/RedBirdTheaterCo/reels/. PRESENTER: https://www.redbirdtheatercompany.com/, https://www.facebook.com/RedBirdTheaterCo/, https://linktr.ee/redbirdtheaternc, https://www.instagram.com/redbirdtheaternc/, and https://www.youtube.com/@RedBirdTheaterCompany. VENUE: https://artscenterlive.org/, https://linktr.ee/artscenterlive, https://www.facebook.com/artscenterlive, https://www.instagram.com/artscenterlive/, https://www.tiktok.com/@artscenterlive, https://x.com/ArtsCenterlive, and https://www.youtube.com/@TheArtsCenterLive. DIRECTIONS/PARKING/MAP: https://artscenterlive.org/visit-us/. THE VELOCITY OF AUTUMN (2011 Boise, ID, and 2014 Broadway dramatic comedy): https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/98323/the-velocity-of-autumn, https://ericcoble.com/adult-plays/, and https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-show/the-velocity-of-autumn-495916. THE SCRIPT (excerpts): https://books.google.com/books. STUDY GUIDE (Utah Shakespeare Festival): . ERIC COBLE (Edinburgh, Scotland-born playwright and screenwriter): https://ericcoble.com/, https://www.concordtheatricals.com/a/1418/eric-coble, https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/eric-coble-495920, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0167906/, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Coble. NOTE: RedBird Theater Company will also perform this show on Sept. 26th and 27th at Walltown Children's Theater in Durham and on Oct. 3rd and 4th at Elizabeth Street United Methodist Church in Durham. The Oct. 3rd and 4th performances are SOLD OUT. TICKETS: $17.82-$43.82, plus taxes. Click here to buy tickets. INFORMATION: contact@redbirdtheatercompany.com. PLEASE DONATE TO: RedBird Theater Company. Quinn Barbaza's Triangle Review Review Permalink.

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