“Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” is a raw, emotional story of finding romance in the worst of times.  This 70-minute production includes only two characters: Danny, a violent trucker who gets into fights constantly, and Roberta, a shame-filled mother who lives with her parents and teenage son.  Danny, otherwise known as “The Beast” to his fellow truck drivers, seems incapable of emotion, while Roberta seems distrusting of men in general and doesn’t seem to want anything to do with them. The pair first meet in a Bronx bar, yelling various obscenities and insults at each other.  They eventually find solace in each other, no matter how violent it might be, and confess damning things to one another.  It was not a surprise that the two end up going back to Roberta’s bedroom together, becoming incredibly vulnerable to each other.  As the night winds on, Roberta and Danny unexpectedly recognize themselves in the other; and the possibility of a genuine relationship emerges.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect when I saw this show, but what I did see was definitely a surprise.  The rawness of this show is unlike any other show out there.  It includes a lot of mature themes that are sometimes hard to deal with and hard to talk about.  The play itself is very heavy and hard to get through.  The subject matter, the language, and the background of both characters add up to an intense show.  It also isn’t like every other play out there in the sense that you’re supposed to like the characters right away.  The script is designed for you to hate Danny and Roberta up until the very end, where you find yourself unexpectedly rooting for their relationship to prevail.  The ending is rocky between the two characters, but in a way, that makes it more real to the audience.  It symbolizes real life: life is rocky, it doesn’t always have happy endings.

Jon Trujillo (Danny) and Madison Miller (Roberta) spoke about their feelings towards the characters.  Trujillo said: “It’s just two broken people that need to be loved, they need to be happy. . . it’s important to play these characters because they’re not characters that get to be played very often.”  Miller agreed with him and added: “It’s very true to life.  Things like this are happening all over, there’s people that are like this. . . these characters are just so messed up, so broken, they want love too.”  Though the characters had rough backgrounds and were tough to play, the actors thought of them in a different light.  “They’re so vulnerable,” said Trujillo, “even more vulnerable than they are headstrong.”

In a nutshell, the moral of this show is love; that love is powerful, love can heal.  When asked what she wanted the audience to take away from this show, Miller stated: “We’ve all had hardships, no one’s life is perfect. . . regardless of how broken you might feel, there is hope for everybody. . . even in the darkest of times, there is beauty in life.”  So while Danny and Roberta are nowhere near perfect, they are fighting for their happily ever after and showing us that life does go on after hardships.