A Contemporary Comedy of Manners by Donna Hoke
REVIEW by ANTHONY CHASE
"Conscience is a matter of choice,” says wealthy financier Grant Parrish in Donna Hoke’s provocative new play, “Brilliant Works of Art.” A clever and biting update of the Comedy of Manners genre, the play is enjoying its world premiere in a handsomely staged and well-acted production presented by Belissima Productions, and directed by Sabrina Kahwaty at the Alleyway Cabaret space.
Hoke has won numerous awards as a playwright, including multiple Artie Awards and nominations locally. This play was included on The Kilroys List, celebrating un- and underproduced new plays by woman, trans, and non-binary writers. She has served leadership roles with the Dramatists Guild, including as a Council member. She is known as an advocate for playwrights living outside of New York City. I can say without fear of contradiction that Hoke is at the very top tier of Buffalo playwrights with a large list of plays to her credit. She has had productions of her work throughout the nation and across the globe.
Hoke’s work is notable for her willingness to explore troubling and socially marginalized expressions of the human need for connection. We see this in plays like The Couple Next Door about swinging couples in the suburbs, or Sons and Lovers, in which a woman experiences her own personal awakening while her gay son is coming out. In Seeds, a woman questions her decision to be childless when her sister offers to be her egg donor surrogate. In Safe, Hoke delves into the issue of teen suicide. Her startling play, Teach, follows a high school principal who “grills his former student, who is now a teacher at his school, about a questionable relationship" with a current student. Teach was produced at Buffalo State University last year, featuring Zoe Goñez, who is now starring in this production.
Hoke’s work often imbues uncomfortable subject matter with urbane humor. This play certainly falls into that category.
As the play begins, law student Abby Gates, played by Goñez, meets wealthy financier Grant Parrish (Greg Howze) to negotiate a 'sugar baby' arrangement. She will become his lover in exchange for financial support. Most urgently, she needs tuition assistance. Grant immediately assumes the role of mentor, schooling Abby, ever so condescendingly, in how to talk, act, and even how to appreciate fine wine in a manner that suggests a modern Pygmalion.
But that’s not where this tale is leading us. Hoke will smartly explore themes of moral flexibility, the nature of art, and the compromises people make to achieve their goals as she takes us on a multi-layered journey of ambition, lust, love, and deception in a world where personal relationships are, essentially, transactional.
Like Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan or Noël Coward's Design for Living, Hoke's play skewers social conventions while exploring ethical compromise through sharp dialogue and complicated romantic entanglements. The dynamic between Abby and Grant is more complex than a simple power imbalance. The efforts that married and secretive Grant makes to mold innocent “Abby” into worldly “Abigail” reveal as much about his insecurities as they do about his dominance. Meanwhile, Abby's apparent helplessness and compliance eventually become strategies of their own.
By sharing his "wisdom," -- done like a devil offering apples in Eden: smooth, seductive, and ultimately poisonous -- Grant also reveals parts of himself. When he instructs Abby to "Learn to tell a good lie," he's not just teaching her; he's exposing his own methods and mindset. "Trust and discretion are the same thing," he tells her.
She’s a fast learner.
Meanwhile, in sharing intimate details of her past, like losing her father at age four and spending her childhood sleeping on a couch while her mother's casual lovers passed through the living room that served as her bedroom in their cramped one-bedroom apartment, Abby creates an emotional intimacy that she will eventually leverage to her advantage.
The complication that upsets this tidy arrangement, as in so many plays, is unexpected love. Abby falls in love with her roommate James, an aspiring artist ironically exploring themes of confession and shame in his work, played with guileless enthusiasm by Johnny Barden. To make matters worse, in a flourish worthy of Alexandre Dumas’s Camille, both Grant and Abby find that their no-strings arrangement has become entangled in knotty authentic feelings that include love, jealously, and possessiveness.
As Abby tries to balance her relationship with James and her arrangement with Grant, she is forced to confront difficult choices about love, ambition, and honesty. Like Lady Teazle in Sheridan’s School for Scandal, Abby navigates between two worlds - her authentic relationship with James and her arrangement with Grant. However, unlike Lady Teazle who ultimately chooses virtue, modern Abby embraces a morally ambiguous path, accepting Grant's contention in explaining his marital infidelity, that, "There is my family. And there is us. One does not diminish the other."
Sabrina Kahwaty's direction brings impressive efficiency to this swiftly moving play. Despite the constraints of the intimate cabaret space, which necessitates numerous scene changes that briefly interrupt the flow, Kahwaty maintains the script's momentum through carefully choreographed transitions. Her blocking makes excellent use of the limited space, positioning characters in ways that reflect their emotional dynamics and provide visual variety within the stage’s tight confines. Moreover, she has guided her three-person cast toward absorbing performances that bring Hoke's morally complex characters to vibrant and sometimes disturbing life. In that regard, the work of Nicolette Navarro as intimacy director provides a substantial head of steam to this incendiary story.
Greg Howze embodies Grant Parrish with smooth sophistication and underlying menace. His delivery of Grant's aphorisms like the aforementioned "Conscience is a matter of choice" carries the casual authority of a man accustomed to bending reality to his will. Howze masterfully reveals Grant's vulnerabilities beneath his polished exterior, particularly in moments when his careful compartmentalization threatens to crumble, or more tellingly, to explode. The script obliges Howze, repeatedly, to offer the setups for unsettling and unexpected repetitions, as when he visits James’s gallery opening and pumps him up with flattery in a way he has previously described doing with his financial clients, a process he calls, “social work.” Others might call it “grooming.”
Zoe Goñez captures Abby Gates's transformation from seemingly naive law student to skilled manipulator with subtle precision. Her portrayal of a carefully constructed "confession" to James, a “brilliant work of artifice,” also presaged by Grant, demonstrates just how well she learns his lessons in strategic deception. Goñez navigates Abby's complex emotional journey with persuasive authenticity, making her character's moral compromises simultaneously understandable and troubling. She seems to believe her lies, but we know she doesn’t. After all, we heard Grant tell her that if you don’t believe your own lies, you might slip. She can’t afford to slip.
Johnny Barden brings an appealing vulnerability to James, the idealistic artist whose pursuit of artistic truth contrasts sharply with the moral compromises that surround him. His evolution from earnest romantic to disillusioned lover feels painfully authentic, and his scenes of artistic passion effectively convey both James's creative drive and his emotional limitations.
Matthew DiVita's lighting design effectively delineates the play's multiple locations while creating intimate spaces for the characters' private moments. The use of convertible furniture pieces allows for fairly fluid, if imperfect, transitions between locations while maintaining the play's momentum. Properties by Meghan Putman are consistently appropriate, but given the logistics, arguably busy. Karen Harty’s costumes successfully speak character and echo their shifting relationships.
Like the best Comedies of Manners, "Brilliant Works of Art" uses its contemporary setting to examine timeless questions about morality, ambition, and love. Hoke's exploration of transactional relationships and artistic compromise brilliantly updates these themes for modern audiences while maintaining the genre's tradition of witty social critique.
An exploration of moral relativism feels particularly relevant in these tawdry times, when the lines between personal and professional ethics routinely blur. Hoke's razor-sharp exploration of moral compromise leaves the audience both entertained and disquieted, holding up a mirror to our own ethical shortcomings in an age when personal gain too often trumps integrity.
Brilliant Works of Art continues through February 15, 2025. https://bellissimaproductions.com/2024-2025-season/
