Danny and the Deep Blue Sea Review: It Cleans Up Well

You never realize how lonely you truly are until you meet someone as lonely as yourself.

Such is the case when the worlds of two social rejects from the Bronx collide in the short play, “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.”

The play started out very strong and promising. Erin Cronican as bitter single mother Roberta and Brandon Walker as total recluse Danny meet in a bar and discover they are more similar than they originally thought.  The way these two actors portray the sullenness of these characters is phenomenal. Everything from Cronican and Walker’s body language, to their clothing, to their somewhat forced, but believable New York City accent is completely on point.

The play, however, went on longer than it needed to. Although character development is vital, the bedroom scene where Roberta and Danny speak about their pasts was dragged out to the point where the middle of the play became boring. That particular scene was over twenty minutes long with no new developments to the story. The characters were recounting old memories and nothing else was going on.

This excess word vomit was included to show why the characters behave in the manner in which they do. At that point, the story soon began to beat a dead horse.

Thankfully, the play picked up towards the end when Roberta and Danny began to speak of where their relationship could take them. If this end scene did not take place, the play would have been a complete snooze-fest. Roberta’s constant wavering about her relationship with Danny could compete with the world’s most pronounced roller coasters. In spite of it being somewhat unnecessary, it makes the audience empathize with Danny and see that these two characters are meant for each other.

“Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” had many other positive attributes such as the crummy looking bedroom Roberta lives in that shows just how immature she is for her 31 years. Walker’s makeup is also well done. For such a small set, all the stage pieces are perfectly suited for the plot and story.

Without the great technical production and the beginning and ending, the play would have taken a turn for the worst. Like Roberta’s emotions, the play was a roller-coaster ride in and of itself.