The first production in Downtown Ojai’s newly refurbished Chaparral Auditorium black box playing space is Martyna Majok’s Ironbound, directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos and starring Marin Ireland, Shiloh Fernandez, Michael Govan Hackett, and Jon Bernthal. The show transports audiences from a warm California evening to a far more inhospitable scenario: Cold nights in New Jersey at a sketchy bus stop across from an abandoned factory where Darja (Ireland) fights with her philandering partner (Bernthal) as he tries to convince her to ignore transgressions and come home. The production is also the kick-off presentation for Bernthal’s passion project, The Ojai Theatre Festival, which he and his team hope to cultivate into an annual event.
Ironbound offers an honest, brutal, and often horrifically comical take on the emotional survival tactics of a woman lacking privilege. Darja’s life, from penniless Polish immigrant following her young husband to a middle-aged, twice-divorced mother without financial security, represents the countless people who never get to have “nice things.” Signified in Darja’s story by idiot boyfriends and stolen negligees, the true luxuries missing from her life are love, pride, security, and happiness. Darja faces no choices — only transactions. Her experience of America is that nothing is ever free, and the price always includes her dignity.
Ireland is a whirlwind of desperate energy that captures Darja’s pivotal moments, from a 20-year-old brought to her knees by unexpected sacrifice; to a thirty-something with almost nothing (yet still so much) to lose; to a middle-aged woman at a precipice, ready to make a deal. Staging in the round is dynamic and well-choreographed, giving shape and presence to the world in the playing space and the extension of it beyond the boundaries of the stage. Ironbound is an all-around high-caliber production that shows the tender points in a hardened heart. Running in Ojai May 16–18. nordhoffdrama.com/ironbound
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