ANDREA PHOX
Éilis Cahill, left, and Sandy Clancy co-star in “A Change of Position,” at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch.
Sally, a teenager who is one of the characters in “A Change of Position” — the play that is currently having its world premiere at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch — has a surly disposition. If your life were like hers, you probably would, too. She lives with her mother Emma in a trailer, which doubles as Emma’s place of work. Emma is a prostitute, and if Sally comes home from her job at a food mart and sees that the Cinderella nightlight in the window is turned on, she knows that Emma is with a client, and that she needs to hang out in her car, or a nearby diner, until the coast is clear.
Written by Jeffrey Sweet (basing the story on characters created by the late Michael Kosarowich) and directed by James Glossman, “A Change of Position” is a modest but affecting story, full of characters whose nagging frustrations and small steps forward seem very real, with the mood occasionally lightened by quirky humor; mischievous fourth wall breaking; and clever, quick set changes (the scenic design is by Jessica Parks) to mark shifts of location from the food mart to the diner to the car to a hospital room, and so on.
The story is set in a small town in Pennsylvania, in the present. When we first meet Sally (played by Sandy Clancy), she is not having a good day. A high school classmate who is aware of Sally’s mother’s job — his father is a client — says something offensive, and Sally responds by throwing her smoothie in his face. He retaliates by slashing her tires.
But then things start going right. Sally’s boss Trent (Ephraim Birney) offers to drive her home and, in the days to come, turns into a concerned friend — and, we suspect, the first positive older-male influence in her life. And Emma (Éilis Cahill) gets a surprising, potentially life-changing offer: Vic (Todd Cerveris), a well-off client of hers, is beset by an unidentified ailment that confines him to a wheelchair. (“My legs are fucked up,” is all he says.) He needs a full-time caretaker, and offers Emma the job.
ANDREA PHOX
Todd Cerveris with Ephraim Birney (left) and Éilis Cahill, in “A Change of Position.”
It doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world. Emma and Vic have a nice, friendly rapport, after all. And if she accepts, she could live in a spare room in his McMansion and make a good salary under much more pleasant circumstances than her present situation offers. Pretty much anything would beat the trailer park.
Emma proceeds cautiously, going over her options with Sally and Trent. She is reluctant to leave her longtime occupation for a job that may be temporary. On the other hand, she realizes that it may be a good time to start a new chapter in her life. “There isn’t a big market for 53-year-old mattress pals,” she says.
More complications ensue, but the rest of the play basically concerns not just Emma and Vic, but Trent and Sally, too, trying to get closer to where they want to be in their lives — and coming to term with elements of their pasts. They are all looking, in one way or another, for a change of position.
Sweet, to his credit, does address, head-on, the biggest believability issue in his story: How did the nice, normal and wealthy Vic come to be a regular client of a trailer-park hooker? (It is hard to imagine a more sensitive john.) Or, as Sally says to Vic, “So, you’re rich, you’re not hideous-looking. What the hell did you turn to my mother for? It seems to me like a lot of women would have been interested.”
Vic does answer, very honestly, and what he says is believable enough that we can get on with the story.
ANDREA PHOX
Sandy Clancy and Ephraim Birney in “A Change of Position.”
Cahill is the standout actor as the complicated, confounding Emma. She is smart and funny, caring but also rough-edged, fun to be around but quick to anger. It is easy to see why she would have had difficulty fitting into a more mainstream lifestyle, and wound up leading the kind of life she did. But while she may have made self-destructive choices, the ferocity of her love for Sally is never in question.
There is a fifth character: Birney also plays another one of Emma’s clients, Neil, who is in just one scene. Neil is introduced with a fourth-wall-breaking segment in which Cahill announces to the audience that they didn’t have enough money to pay a fifth actor. “Ya work with what ya got,” she says.
It’s a throwaway line, in a sense. But it also echoes the play’s theme of these characters struggling to create a bit of happiness out of their lives, while the ingredients they have to work with may seem to be meager.
New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch will present “A Change of Position” through Aug. 23. Visit njrep.org.
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