In Larry Atlas` ”Total Abandon” Reid Ostrowski has a killer role to play- literally. In a grueling, two-hour tour-de-force by the Kinetic Theatre Company at the Avenue Theatre, Ostrowski plays Lenny Keller, a child-abusing father who has severely beaten his infant son, the one person who loved him;
the boy is now sustained only by a life-support system.
It would be easy to dismiss Lenny as a monster of evil and a future candidate for the electric chair. What`s hard is what Ostrowski perilously pulls off: He depicts, not just the pain Lenny inflicts, but the pain inside that pain, the cycle of abuse that Lenny endured from his uncaring father and helpless mother-and that inevitably ends with the murder of his son.
Ostrowski has performed in lighter fare such as Kinetic`s ”Awake and Sing” and in more traditional fare such as Lifeline Theatre`s ”The Old Jew” (in which he is pictured at left)-but depicting Lenny`s total abandon requires an agonizing, risk-taking self-exposure that few actors could endure. The role of a lifetime can take its toll.
Ostrowski: ”Before each show I have to isolate myself for an hour and just listen to the character start to grow inside me. When I come off stage each night I`m literally shaking and have to sit in the dressing room for 10 minutes to try to calm down.
”It was difficult to get into the part, since I have a son of my own. Though I read a lot of articles about the causes of child abuse, it was the script that got through to me. I`m in awe of it, especially at how well it shows the rage Lenny feels about the love he never got. Right away I could feel what he`d gone through.
”To build up the passion I also tried to recall traumatic things that happened when I was a child. But as the play shows, you don`t have to be physically hurt to be emotionally scarred: mean words and never a gentle touch can damage a person early and forever. That`s why, as strange as it sounds, there really is no bad guy in this play.” Lenny and his son are both victims of an earlier cruelty.
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”Total Abandon” runs through Sunday at 4223 N. Lincoln Ave.; 404-1780.
