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Words, like blades, can cut you to the quick. And “quick” in adjectival form was the length of the limited run of Pen Knife, but its impact has stayed with me, and I’d love to see this intriguing drama return. A pen knife can be a knife to sharpen a quill pen or a knife blade hidden in what appears to be a pen. Either is appropriate for the world of those 19th century French writers, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, and their dysfunctional, competitive, addictive and abusive relationship, included injuries to the skin with that item that gives its name to the play. And what a play it is: the toying of cat against mouse, the hope against hope, the rebellions against societal expectations.
Oh, these men who were lovers, produced potent poetry packed with plenty of punch, pens mightier than that little sword, and when we hear the way they used spoken words as weapons in talking to and about each other, one can imagine much emotional blood spurted and given gladly and madly. Obsession and fear of loneliness makes strange bedfellows, and so do the three characters in the story: Verlaine and his wife, Mathilde, and the younger man who enters their life and home (17 when the torrid tale begins, with Verlaine a decade older). Talent, of course, does not necessarily know the barrier of age, nor does love or determination -- or determination to be loved or express it. Herein, you have more than enough for explosions.
As one enters, Jian Jung’s set design is immediately dramatic and impactful, like the drama about to follow. Hung from the ceiling on strings, are countless pens and the playing area is carpeted with overlapping pieces of crisp, blank white paper, even covering one of the actors whose feet we can see sticking out from the piles as we enter to the audience seats which surround the stage. This should make for quite an “entrance” you think, and you’ll be right, not to mention the fact that, by the way, you’ll see that the scattered ream of 8-1/2 x 11 is all that is covering what is a naked man. For each of the three players, there’s nudity that is brief and there’s other time spent wearing briefs for the men. Much time is spent in bed or at the desk, the only other item of focus. A bed for sex, a desk for writing, and the tools of the trade as far as the eye can see, and a certain liquor and a certain sense of impending disaster, perhaps self-created and inevitable -- what more do these writers need?
Christopher Richard’s script combines facts, actual writing of the men and imagined conversations, making the surrounding audience voyeurs. Javierantonio Gonzalez’s direction is taught and tense at times, yet has other moments where the pace is luxuriously slower as we wait and wonder if and when and how characters will take leave of each other or their senses. Accusations fly, we are left to wonder if lies or bald truths can be more hurtful. Who has the upper hand in this three-handed power struggle? It keeps changing, as they circle each other, resisting going in for the easy kill or escape. The changing modes of fascination and fears they inspire in each other, the hurts and hopes, like magnets whose opposite poles attract intensely and then repel -- it’s all a dance. The eyes are full of woundedness and desperate needs for acceptance, bravado and challenge.
The three actors succeed in making us go through an audience‘s own cornucopia of emotions in responding to the characters: sympathy, 
anger, dismay, revulsion, pity, chills, forgiveness, justification --- as we root for, or are shocked by, each at different times. They are not blazingly brilliant nor consistently fascinating to the point of making us totally mesmerized, and the pacing is not absent of moments of mind-wandering, redundancy, a sense of something missing or remembering we are seeing a play. As we observe them in twos, the third is always observing the others, the actors not leaving the stage. There is the sense that they are always aware of (or should be) the third party who’s absent but affected. One must remember it was a different world where money and marriage were looked at through other prisms, as were, certainly, homosexuality and artistic reputations.
As Paul Verlaine, David Skeist has the opportunity to seize upon the opportunities to show dismay, suspicion, fascination, anger, duplicity and more, though a certain quiveringly mild-mannered hesitancy --although needed at many times -- becomes the main color. It’s believable, all right, just not all that interesting to watch so repeatedly. As the character created more from whole cloth of the imagination than from history, Melinda Helfrich has a quiet power and sly way, great stage presence and the character is wisely kept from being just a pouting rejected partner or a shrew. All three actors have that cat-that-ate-the-canary sneaky smile, it sometimes being almost a Cheshire Cat grin, most of all Michael Barringer as the manipulative, self-spoiled Rimbaud, aware of his own sexual value as leverage, a maddening sense of entitlement and self-aggrandizement that includes his view of his writing talent. Though he could use a dose more of fierce charisma factor, rather than underplaying that and letting the tight reins slip, he’s effective. And it’s no small feat that Rimbaud’s cruel acting and words don’t make him simply hateful, rather than as interesting as he is. Acting innocent even when faced with indisputable evidence of thoughtless misdeeds or attitudes, he’s playing with fire -- a fire he has often set himself. Play with fire and you get burned. And they all do. Pen Knife creates plenty of sparks.
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