The Uncomfortable Companionship of “Maz and Bricks”

It’s 2017 and two 20-something strangers are riding the Luas light rail train through Dublin. Maz (Eliza Frakes) is a sardonic activist coming to the city to protest in hopes of repealing Ireland’s Eighth Amendment, which criminalizes abortion. Bricks (Ken Yoshikawa) is an aimless hooligan looking forward to taking his daughter to the zoo.

There’s an obvious divide between these two very different people, but there’s a connection, too—something unspoken that’s leading them both toward introspection and heartbreaking revelations.

Written by Eva O’Connor, Maz and Bricks—currently onstage at Corrib Theatre—is, above all else, a plea for empathy and understanding among disparate people. It was written in the run-up to Ireland’s repeal of the Eighth Amendment, but director Melody Erfani has drawn a clear line between the play and the efforts by certain American lawmakers to overturn Roe v. Wade any way they can.

“Being set in Ireland,” she writes in the show’s program, “I feel the play gives us the distance to really experience the fight for bodily autonomy without so directly addressing the reopened wounds of our current turmoil.”

After departing the Luas and going their separate ways, Maz and Bricks deliver monologues that give the audience a play-by-play of their respective paths. They describe, in rhyming verse, going about their business while reenacting the conversations they have with other people.

Frakes and Yoshikawa are the only actors who appear onstage, but the audience never feels underwhelmed or left in the lurch. The two demonstrate a clear understanding that their characters are more than just words on a page. They ably bring Maz and Bricks to life with pathos, humanity and chemistry that feels real and grounded in spite of the play’s abstractions.

The set—a weathered brick road that ramps upward at one end, a park bench with a faded teal paint job, yellow bars and railings, and an ordinary trash can—is a character in its own right. There’s a lived-in quality that scenic designer Kyra Sanford brings to the show, offering just enough detail to make the set instantly recognizable, but malleable enough to act as a light rail train, a Capel Street pub, or the Rosie Hackett Bridge.

If there’s a misstep in Maz and Bricks, it’s that the abortion debate takes a backseat in the story as the play goes on. Maz is a vocally pro-choice feminist, having had an abortion herself shortly after her 17th birthday, and O’Connor never questions or doubts her beliefs or her convictions. Bricks, by contrast, is vaguely pro-life and casually dismisses the protesters at first, but is quickly drawn in by their passion and their creed.

There’s never any real debate between the two characters about bodily autonomy because, according to the play, the debate isn’t worth having: Maz is right and the other side isn’t. I can’t say I disagree with the sentiment, but it doesn’t make for the most compelling and nuanced social commentary.

Maz and Bricks mostly focuses on the eponymous pair’s trauma and the different ways they deal with it. Maz is a powder keg of raw anger ready to burst at any injustice, and while her rage against a backward system is clearly justified, it’s also a defense mechanism. Without her anger, all Maz is left with is the lingering pain of the abusive home she ran away from. It’s all too easy for her to succumb to self-loathing and desperation.

Bricks, on the other hand, is doing his darndest to bury his trauma by ignoring it completely. He attempts to go on, business as usual, partying and sleeping around while maintaining his commitments to sobriety and his role as a parent, but it’s clear his grief over a brother’s suicide still weighs him down and he can’t escape it, no matter how hard he tries.

Maz and Bricks isn’t really about the debate over abortion rights. Rather, it’s about how we deal with pain and with whom we deal with it. Whenever one of the youngsters launches into a monologue, the other freezes in place, awkwardly standing still as a statue while separate, internal conversations play out around them.

Despite their differences in location, in motivation, in ideology, Maz and Bricks aren’t alone in their anguish. Whether they realize it or not, these two kids need each other, because nobody makes it through this thing called life on their own.

SEE IT: Maz and Bricks plays at the Boiler Room, Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave., 503-389-0579, corribtheatre.org. 7:30 pm Thursday Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, through March 13. $30.