Review: "But for the Grace"

Photos By David Roy

Once in a while, you stumble on a great piece of theater that makes you think and want to be part of a solution. "But for the Grace," a one-man show written by David Eliet about the plight of this country's hungry, now playing in the NY Fringe Festival, is such a show.

My official review of the show runs at American Theater Web http://americantheaterweb.info/, but the message of the show is so powerful, I felt it deserved a few more words here.
Eliet interviewed more than 100 clients, volunteers and staff at food pantries in Rhode Island and wrote the piece commissioned by the RI Community Food Bank to dispel false ideas about people who rely on food pantries to feed their families.


Actor Bob Jaffe portrays a wide range of characters, 11 in all, to tell the story. Their reflections are neatly woven with statistic about how hard it is for some to put food on the table. The hungry themselves are statistics, "Angelina DeFabrio, age 83, lives on a widows pension," Jaffe tells us as he piles client files on top of each other on the stage. "Natalie, age 23, manic depressive," he tells us as he piles garments representing "women at a food pantry."

As files, pictures and garments representing the hungry overwhelm the stage, you begin to get a sense of how big the problem really is. In fact, Jaffe spells it out, literally, for us on a white board.


"Rhonda works 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month, and takes home about $400 each week, netting about $10 an hour," he tells us. "To pay her bills, Rhonda has to work 115 hours a month to pay her rent, 26 hours a month to pay gas and electric, eight hours a month for her medical co-pays, 12 hours a month to put gas in the car to get back and forth to work."

He shows us the white board with his computations.

"That adds up to 161 hours and she hasn't paid for food yet."

The show had its premiere at Trinity Rep in Providence. It plays the Fringe Aug. 14 at 9:45pm, Aug. 15 at 5:15pm and Aug. 17 at 2:30 pm at Walkerspace, 46 Walker Street, New York. For more information, visit www.fringenyc.org.

"But for the Grace" will be performed here in New England at the University of Rhode Island in North Kingstown on Sept. 13 and 14.

For more information about the show, email info@bftg.org.