NYC definitely got a treat when Dr. Cynthia Hsiung and Nick Milodragovich decided that they would help Tasha Gates bring her production of John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea to the city. Gates enlistment of old (and talented) friend James Lidell and, now Montana based, director Tessa Welsch allowed for a production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea that no New York director or producer would dare to put on stage.

A show that Gates has wanted to act in since a young theater student in Los Angeles, she secured Lidell’s commitment to doing the production, when the opportunity arose, fourteen years ago. This combination of determination, commitment and Gates’ resources allowed for a crushing and daring realism. When Gates’ Roberta slams Lidell’s Danny the audience repeatedly hears her crushing blows against his chest. When she slaps him, the sound reverberates throughout the theater. The sex is rough. The way sex in a co-dependent, toxic relationship would be. The actors and director embrace all the violence of Shanley’s play.

The weakness of the show is actually Shanley’s script. This 1983 play, only his second published work, shows a fear of cruelty that his later works fully and unapologetically embrace. The second half of Danny finds Shanley giving this incredibly damaged couple the hope of recovery and redemption which is incredibly unrealistic. It is something Shanley would never do today.

This Danny only ran for three shows in NY, but, given the amount of physical brutality, the actors probably could not have survived a longer run.