Night Maneuver

BED HEAD Smith, left, pins brother Caronna.

The two brothers in Howard Korder’s Night Maneuver are stuck, cruelly limited by their own shallow imaginations and dismal surroundings—but that hardly excuses Lighthouse Theatre Company for putting its audience in the same predicament. Like a mash-up of early Mamet and Shepard, Korder’s 1982 drama centers on Lou (Caronna), a 26-year-old who squats in a run-down slum apartment, building up his self-confidence by tearing down his younger sibling, Tim (Smith). It’s hard to blame Lou for his downward spiral; he was equally abused by his older (and conspicuously absent) brother, Monty. However, it is easy to accuse Caronna, whose one-dimensional portrayal lacks hunger and necessary rage.

By reducing Lou to an anxious auto-shop employee looking to score a drug-deal ticket out of this urban cesspool, Caronna fails to balance his resentful and idealized memories of Monty and settles for being a nasty, talkative lowlife. Smith is hardly better as Tim, but at least he plays up his childish excitement and drugged-out stupors, and his reactions to Lou’s violence are knotted up in layers of fear, love and hate. Director Tom Bain commits to the stark naturalism that Night Maneuver requires: His set is a squalid mess of mattresses, trash and milk-crate cubbies, and the fight choreography is raw and looks painful. Environments like these nicely frame characters, but it takes more than a bare, flickering low-watt bulb to light up Korder’s dark text.