New York Theatre Workshop Fourth Street Theatre
83 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 22, $18
800-838-3006
www.carascarmack.com
Subtitled “A Fierce Telling of Feelin’ Alive A’fore We Die,” What Happened in Ohio has nothing to do with the 2004 election, Kent State, or longtime Buckeyes coach Woody Hayes punching Clemson’s Charlie Bauman after a late interception during the 1978 Gator Bowl. Instead, it’s an intriguing piece of experimental theater about love, loss, and leaving. Set in rural Ohio in the 1950s, What Happened tells the story of four siblings, played by the Roadsters theatrical troupe of actor-singers (Priscilla Holbrook, Ashley Nease, Stephanie Viola, and Nathan Richard Wagner, along with playwright Cara Scarmack). On Claire Karoff’s stark stage, with dangling lightbulbs, a cabinet of knickknacks to one side, hanging cords that hold string instruments on the other, and a quilt of earth-toned colors that somewhat resembles the map of the United States in the back, Holbrook, Nease, Viola, and Wagner sing country bluegrass songs (with Wagner on mandolin), make sharp, carefully choreographed movements, and recite poetic text that creates an abstract narrative centered around a fatal car accident that changed their lives. Told in sixteen parts with such names as “What to Carry On, What to Leave Behind,” “Is That Suitcase Too Heavy for Ye?,” and “Darling, Can You Tell Me Where Home Is?,” the play features, first and foremost, terrific music, in addition to a fine-smelling pancake breakfast, Wagner violently smashing a mandolin, a creative method of making a bed, and a lot of face-to-face moments that help develop the characters’ relationships with one another. But nothing is ever set in stone; Scarmack, who also sings and plays guitar as half of the Wildwood Sisters, keeps the precise details just out of reach, leaving the audience to grasp at the facts much like Wagner runs around and leaps after a bug. Then again, What Happened in Ohio isn’t really about what actually happened in Ohio but how what happened affected the lives of this close-knit but deeply troubled family.