FOUR QUARTERS

Written by Christopher Heath
Directed by Gigi Wynn Perkins

On August 9, 2002, Agony made its New York stage debut with Christopher Heath's innovative new play, Four Quarters, at the New York International Fringe Festival.

A "very interesting shell game as four people play two," (Stage Press Weekly) Four Quarters is a play in which two adults discover a love for their inner halves while searching for their other halves. Unique in style, this fast-paced play opened at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival and received critical acclaim. Elias Stimac from Back Stage called the play a "sexy, savvy…intriguing, if not altogether enlightening, examination of the elusive emotion called love." Liz Kimberlin from nytheatre.com referred to it as "a very entertaining and compelling play."

Cast:
Teri: Jennifer Boutell
Terry: Matthew George
Jo: Christin Nacke
Joe: Justin Nadal

Reviews of the Original Production

From Backstage, by Elias Stimac, August 29, 2002

The joys and frustrations, heartaches and headaches of modern relationships are brought together in one bedroom in Christopher Heath's sexy, savvy play, "Four Quarters." The result is an intriguing, if not altogether enlightening, examination of the elusive emotion called love.

Four actors (Jennifer Boutell, Matthew George, Christin Nacke, and Justin Nadal) portray two halves of a couple, interchanging partners so that every combination of gender is explored during the course of the show. Not only do they frequently switch during scene breaks, but often during the actual scenes. The most inspired moments come when all four are on stage relating to one another with simultaneous multiple conversations. Topics range from sex to skydiving to cancer, and the couple's aspirations and anxieties are revealed both in the heat of passion and silence of a spurned lover.

Heath's script is clever and unconventional, but more new ground could have been covered on the subject of relationships in this context. The characters yearn to be whole-to find their other half-which is quite standard for most romantic dramas. Heath does succeed in making these desires universal by juxtaposing each couple's reactions to the flirting, the fighting, and the forgiving.

Director Gigi Wynn Perkins has done wonders discovering countless ways to stage the various scenes on a single central bed, and has coaxed just as many tender and comic moments from her warm and winning cast. Boutell, George, Nacke, and Nadal each contribute immensely both to the intimate and outrageous aspects of the play.

Perkins also made good choices with the monochromatic costumes, while Kit Perkins designed the stellar sound. Thad Strassberger kept the quick-paced changes illuminated with his skilled lighting design.

From nytheatre.com, by Liz Kimberlin, August 16, 2002

Four Quarters, a one-act play by Christopher Heath now appearing at The Red Room, seems to be less concerned with the destination and more with the journey of four quarters struggling to come together to equal one. Ultimately, life being life, they cannot succeed, but they sure as hell try. And through the trying, the four quarters at least learn to become two solid halves. The play is crisply directed by Gigi Wynn Perkins and performed by an attractive, smart and very brave cast consisting of Jennifer Boutell, Matthew George, Christin Nacke and Justin Nadal. There is one set piece: a constantly disheveled bed that gets a lot of use over the course of an hour.

The "quarters" are Jo (Nacke) and Joe (Nadal) and Teri (Boutell) and Terry (George), who look for love for all the wrong reasons but find it anyway. Jo/Joe is insecure, hedonistic, filled with self-loathing, and only interested in "getting laid." Secure, fun-loving Teri/Terry is in denial about her/his terminal cancer but desperate to make the most of every moment s/he has left. Jo/Joe and Teri/Terry meet, eat Thai food, go skydiving, fall in love, and use the bed a lot as the various combinations of quarters interact. Then Teri/Terry admits s/he's going to be dying very soon, leaving Jo/Joe devastated.

Fortunately, the play avoids most of the bipolar, yin-yang type clichés and lets the quarters be individual characters with individual relationships to each other. Although Mr. Heath still has a draft or two to go before Four Quarters really becomes a finished product, I nonetheless found it a very entertaining and compelling play. Only towards the end did my attention begin to wander. There are a few too many short blackouts with repetitive, borderline soap opera-ish "I love you, take me back" scenes that work against the play's rhythm-as does Jo/Joe's very PC, very sincere closing duologue about personal empowerment. However, these are minor quibbles. For me it was a mostly delightful, sometimes poignant hour that flew by.

From New England Entertainment Digest, by Jules Becker, October, 2002

Four Quarters, seen at the Red Room, is a frank exploration by New York playwright Christopher Heath of the varieties of human relationships, and brings together two couples for a full range of intimacies. Under Gigi Wynn Perkins' sharp direction, four skillful actors become Terry and Joe (men) and Teri and Jo (women) who form the metaphorically complementary lovers and friends that the play's title suggests. Justin Nadal is the standout as sensitive Joe, who openly faces his love for Terry with as much candor as he remains committed to his union with Jo. Four Quarters, a thematically dense short work about 80 minutes in length, promises no easy answers but does make its questions about human caring and understanding both involving and powerfully disturbing.

by Brandon Rabin, July 30, 2002

What if the never-ending internal dialogue that we call our 'thoughts' were externalized? Christopher Heath's fascinating new play uses this as a theatrical device, giving its sexually ambiguous characters (Jo/Joe and Teri/Terry) each two physical expressions, one masculine, one feminine. Hence: FOUR QUARTERS.

The play explores love and death with a resonance and power that gains strength from its deliberate indefiniteness, allowing the viewer to write his or her own emotional history onto the characters' plight. Honest and searing, the dramatic work refuses to make easy choices or come to simplistic conclusions. Like a good french film, one comes away from Four Quarters not with a one-line moral, but with a deepened understanding of human nature and this alternately sad and exhilirating condition we all suffer from called life.

by Daphne T. Street, August 7, 2002

Four Quarters, a play by Christopher Heath, premiering August 9, 2002 at the New York International Fringe Festival, is a fantastically surreal experience. Allow me to introduce you to Teri, Terry, Jo and Joe. Four actors take the stage to represent two people searching for their other halves and discovering their inner selves. They form a complete mosaic, giving a distinct name, face and purpose to the voices of our internal dialogue while embracing the intricacies of the love, conflict, sex, humor, loss and reconciliation of all that makes a relationship. While the content and certainly the structure of the play may seem complex, Christopher Heath has masterfully presented us with the reality of life with humor, honesty and clarity. Four quarters does in fact equal one whole, but there is no singular explanation, always several points of view and never a dull moment.