this week in theater

THE GARDEN

Caroline Stefanie Clay and Charlayne Woodard play a mother and daughter reconnecting in The Garden (photo by J Fannon)

THE GARDEN
Baltimore Center Stage
Through July 18, $15-$40
www.centerstage.org

This past April, Manhattan Theatre Club presented a virtual version of Charlayne Woodard’s solo play Neat as part of its Curtain Call series; the autobiographical work, written and performed by Woodard, had debuted on MTC’s stage in 1997. Recorded from her home for the online version, Neat tells the story of Woodard’s coming-of-age in Albany in the 1970s, when she was a teenager and her disabled aunt, Neat, came to live with her family. Woodard has also delved into her past and present in Flight, In Real Life, and Pretty Fire, while The Night Watcher was based on actual slave narratives.

Woodard returns to the stage in The Garden, a La Jolla Playhouse commission filmed live at Baltimore Center Stage and streaming through July 18. Woodard stars as Cassandra, a middle-aged woman who is visiting her mother, Claire Rose (Caroline Stefanie Clay), for the first time in three years. They are so estranged that Cassandra uses her mother’s given name, refusing to call her “mother” or any other similar appellation. Sneaking up on her as the play starts, Cassandra says, “Claire Rose, Claire Rose, Claire Rose, Claire Rose! I’m sorry! Oh my God! I didn’t mean to frighten you! I’m sorry! Please? It’s just me. Claire Rose, Claire Rose, please!!!” Her mother replies, “I was beginning to think I might never see you again.”

Over the course of seventy-five minutes, mother and daughter bring up past wrongs, explore what tore them apart, and reveal deeply emotional secrets that might bring them back together. The show takes place in a large garden created by Tony-winning set designer Rachel Hauck, featuring pinkeye purple hull peas, crookneck squash, Swiss chard, mustard greens, and turnip greens in numerous floor boxes and a small greenhouse. Claire Rose might live by herself, but she does not consider herself lonely. Answering her phone, Claire Rose says to the person on the other end of the line, “I am not at all alone. I’m in my garden.” Later, she tells Cassandra, “All I can say is this particular morning, I need the peace my garden brings me.”

The garden is an apt metaphor for the lives Claire Rose and Cassandra are living and the concepts of “home” and being “uprooted,” representing elements they personally chose to grow as well as those that were forced upon them, out of their control, especially when it comes to race. “This day . . . I believe this day is different from all the rest,” Cassandra says. Claire Rose responds, “Different from all the rest. . . . I don’t know. But I turned on CNN, the BBC. I turned on Fox News, only to find out things are far worse today than they were yesterday! My big question is why are we going backwards in this country. Pretty soon Black folk will be back at the voting booth, guessing how many jelly beans are in the jar —” Cassandra cuts her off, declaring, “— Very true. These are frightening times. But I didn’t come three thousand miles to discuss . . . voter suppression. I suggest you stay away from the twenty-four-hour news cycle, anyway—” This time Claire Rose cuts her daughter off, proclaiming, “—Oh, no. We can’t afford to live in a bubble. They are coming for us, Cassandra! It’s time to be vigilant. You don’t want to find yourself living like Negroes had to live back in the ’40s and ’50s. This country was a misery back then. . . . Oh, yes. Good ole’ racism. It is and always has been alive and kicking.”

Charlayne Woodard wrote and stars in Baltimore Center Stage streaming production of The Garden (photo by J Fannon)

Claire Rose and Cassandra each share horrifying, tragic stories from their past, which get to the heart of their fractured relationship, in need of serious tending. Cassandra is defiant in explaining that she felt her mother cared more for the garden than for her children, imploring, “Claire Rose . . . you are so generous, so nurturing every step of the way with this garden. April to October. Whether there’s too much rain or freezing temperatures. This garden never gets on your nerves. Me, Rachel, Isaiah, even Pop-Pop — we’ve all been competing with this garden. I have always done the best I could to be a good daughter. But you left me out of it. My shrink says —” An adamant Claire Rose defends herself: “This garden is between me and my God. Competing with my garden? That’s as silly as me competing with your career. Who does that? If you choose to be jealous of some beets and some eggplant and my heirloom tomatoes, maybe that’s a topic to bring up with your shrink.” It all leads to a haunting, unforgettable finale.

Filmed by David Lee Roberts Jr. with camera operators Darius Moore and Taja Copeland, The Garden is directed with a compelling green thumb by Patricia McGregor (Hamlet, Hurt Village), who allows the actors, who occasionally break the fourth wall, time and room to grow as the narrative unfolds. Two-time Obie winner and Tony nominee Woodard (Jeremy O. Harris’s “Daddy,” Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine) and Clay (Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, Adrienne Kennedy’s Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side) cultivate a potent and powerful chemistry as a daughter and mother who have never quite understood each other but are more alike than they realize.

It’s a gripping story that blossoms at just the right moment in time, tackling issues of loss and isolation as we emerge from the pandemic lockdown and family and friends meet up in person for the first time in more than a year in a country dangerously polarized by social injustice, police brutality, and health and economic crises that disproportionately affect people of color. In her 1983 book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker wrote, “Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength — in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.” Those words ring as true as ever in 2021, embodied in Woodard’s moving, heartrending play.

PTP/NYC: LUNCH / STANDING ON THE EDGE OF TIME / A SMALL HANDFUL

PTP/NYC’s tasty virtual free Lunch continues through July 13

Who: PTP/NYC (Potomac Theatre Project)
What: Virtual summer season
Where: PTP/NYC YouTube
When: July 9-13 (Lunch), July 23-27 (Standing on the Edge of Time), August 13-17 (A Small Handful), free with advance RSVP (donations accepted)
Why: Every summer, I look forward to seeing what unique plays Potomac Theatre Project, aka PTP/NYC, brings to the city. Founded in 1987 by co-artistic directors Cheryl Faraone, Richard Romagnoli, and Jim Petosa at Middlebury College, the organization presents old and new works by such playwrights as Vaclav Havel, Harold Pinter, Snoo Wilson, Tom Stoppard, C. P. Taylor, and, primarily, Caryl Churchill and Howard Barker. The company’s 2020 season ran online in the fall, with Churchill’s Far Away, Dan O’Brien’s The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage, and Barker’s A Political Statement in the Form of Hysteria. The 2021 season is virtual as well, opening July 9-13 with a splendid production of Steven Berkoff’s Lunch.

“What do you want?” pushy salesman Tom (Bill Army) asks Mary (Jackie Sanders). “Nothing,” she replies. The two are sitting on the edge of a moving sea, their backs to the ocean as dark clouds emerge behind them. Refusing to give up, he later asks, “Don’t you ever want something else?” She responds again, “Nothing.” She tries to leave several times, but he insists she stay.

During the forty-minute absurdist play, the two strangers wonder about a romantic rendezvous as they defend their lives and the choices they’ve made while attacking the other’s, at times hitting hard and deep, although not much seems to stick. She calls him a “salesman of nothing, a canine groper . . . a dirty little man,” while he tells her, “Crawling words creep out like spiders from your ancient gob.” Occasionally they speak directly to the viewer, considering their situation, not sure what they should do next. It might not be love at first sight for both of them, but neither can they simply get up and walk away, allowing us to eavesdrop on their unusual conversation, with unique language that the closed captioning often has no idea how to transcribe.

“You sound like high-pressure hissing from cracked pipes,” Mary says as he waxes poetic about his job. “I’m no pressure,” he replies. “I dissolve into fat and slide under the door, staining the concrete stairs on the way down — those thousands of white — dirty — grey concrete stairs that have gnawed my feet away — choked on the dust — white dust that concrete secretes — salesman’s disease — bang-bang, up the stairs and then slither down in a visceral pool of grease dragging nerve endings, plasma, and intestines . . . re-form on the pavement — plunge the eyes back in — the shirt has dissolved into my flesh — become an outer skin . . . recoup in the ABC — salesman’s filling station — pump in the hot brown bird vomit — and the others are just sludging in, their faces slapped puce with rejection, the waitress, sliding around the dead pool of grease, slithers her knotted varicosity towards me and for a treat smashes some aerated bread down my throat which dissolves into dust, white dust that concrete secretes, atrophying delicate nasal membranes . . .” She asks, “Don’t you like your work?” He answers, “Love it! Every moment, every earth-shattering cosmological moment of it.”

Directed by Romagnoli, the prerecorded play was filmed with the actors in different locations, but Courtney Smith’s production design, lighting, and cinematography attempt to make it appear like they are in the same space. Army (The Band’s Visit, Scenes from an Execution) and Sanders (The Taming of the Shrew, Cowgirls) are lovely together — er, well, apart — in a work that premiered at the King’s Head in London in 1983, with Linda Marlowe and Ian Hastings starring. Berkoff, who has played villains in such films as Beverly Hills Cop, Octopussy, and Rambo: First Blood Part II, has also written and directed such plays as East, West, Decadence, Kvetch, Actor, and Massage, many of which he appeared in as well. Lunch, which runs about as long as it takes to eat lunch, is a tasty treat, a delicious morsel about two very different people who come together by chance and reevaluate their lives as they reaffirm their identities.

PTP/NYC’s free 34.5 season continues July 23-27 with the ninety-minute Standing on the Edge of Time, consisting of short works by David Auburn, Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner, Mac Wellman, Steven Dykes and others, directed by Faraone and featuring such company vets as Alex Draper, Tara Giordano, Stephanie Janssen, Christopher Marshall, and Aubrey Dube, followed August 13-17 with A Small Handful, a filmed thirty-minute piece directed and conceived by Petosa that uses text by Anne Sexton and songs by composer Gilda Lyons, spoken by Paula Langton and sung by Kayleigh Riess.

LUCKY STAR (0.3)

Pioneers Go East Collective’s Lucky Star (0.3) takes place at Judson Memorial Church July 13-30

LUCKY STAR (0.3)
Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square South between Thompson & Sullivan Sts.
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, July 13-30, free with RSVP, 8:00
www.judson.org
pioneersgoeast.org

Pioneers Go East Collective honors the history of DIY queer artmaking at such famed New York City venues as La MaMa, Judson Memorial Church, and the Pyramid Club in Lucky Star (0.3), a free multidisciplinary performance installation taking place Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 8:00 at Judson from July 13 to 30. Inspired by Club 57, which was recently highlighted in the documentary Kenny Scharf: When Worlds Collide, the in-person work consists of five episodes featuring dance/performance artists Shaina and Bryan Baira, Bree Breeden, Daniel Diaz, Beth Graczyk, and Joey Kipp and nightlife icon Agosto Machado. Lucky Star (0.3) was written by creative director Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte and production designer Philip Treviño, with choreography by Ori Flomin, film by Jon Burklund and video designer Kathleen Kelley, set design and fabrication by Mark Tambella, and sound by Marielle Iljazoski and Ryan William Downey.

“Lucky Star was born by a desire to make art in a new time,” the collective said in a statement. “We pay homage to creators and legends whose trailblazing work has solidified ways for us to survive as artists reimagining our approach to sharing our work in the age of social media and instant gratification. We term the project a meta-creative journey inviting viewers to engage in an emergent process of collective liberation.” Inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem “Pioneers, O Pioneers!” (“O you youths, Western youths, / So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, / Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, / Pioneers! O pioneers!”), Pioneers Go East Collective was founded in 2010 to “empower a collective of thought-provoking, adventurous, and proud LGBTQ artists . . . dedicated to Latinx, BIPOC, and immigrant artists and teaching artists and their communities in all five boroughs, [exploring] stories of vulnerability and courage for social change.” Admission to Lucky Star (0.3) is free with advance RSVP.

SOCIAL DISTANCE HALL: ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

Ann Dowd is mesmerizing in one-woman Enemy of the People at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
Park Ave. Armory
643 Park Ave. at Sixty-Seventh St.
June 22 – July 9 (canceled)
www.armoryonpark.org

Water, water everywhere: It was an odd coincidence that on City of Water Day, July 10, when the Waterfront Alliance hosts special events to raise awareness about water and the environment, Park Avenue Armory announced the cancellation of its widely praised extended run of Robert Icke’s superb reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People — which deals with poisoned water. The ninety-minute one-woman show, scheduled to continue through August 8, was forced to halt because star Ann Dowd had to “address a pressing family matter.” In another odd coincidence, on City of Water Day, I was watching NYClassical’s adaptation of King Lear with Nahum Tate’s 1681 “happy ending” when a sudden, unexpected storm hit the shores of Manhattan and forced us to scurry home, missing the positive conclusion. (Dark clouds became visible on the horizon just as the storm scene began.)

Ibsen’s play about the conflict between public good and private conscience famously centers on water. Icke’s adaptation updates it to the modern-day fictional community of Weston Springs, which advertises, “Come for Mother Nature’s therapy; stay afterwards for some retail therapy. Weston Springs, renowned the world over as a wonder in a mountain paradise. Quench your thirst.” The action opens as Dr. Joan Stockman has discovered that there’s a dangerous amount of lead in the water, which people both bathe in and drink. She wants her brother, Peter, the mayor, to close the spa immediately and authorize an expensive, multiyear reconstruction, which Peter argues would devastate the town’s economic stability. Dr. Stockman takes her case to the people and the local newspaper, resulting in tense discussions and arguments about the role of government, free speech, and the value of human life itself.

Enemy of the People is beautifully staged by Icke on Hildegard Bechtler’s awe-inspiring set, consisting of long wooden walkways that Dowd traverses, stopping at certain points and delivering her monologues; the audience listens through headphones, although when the actress was closer to me, I took them off to hear her natural timbre. (The sound design is by Mikaal Sulaiman.) Dowd serves as omniscient narrator and voices such characters as Joan and Peter; Joan’s husband, Jeffrey Cooper; immigrant housekeeper Vidya; Artie Goldman, editor of the Weston Eagle; his deputy editor, Robin; Dr. Mona at the Weston Medical Centre; Lily, the mayor’s press secretary; and various other members of the community. In the middle of the set is a circular spinning table on which Dowd places miniature white buildings, calling to mind both a globe and the Wheel of Fortune. Cameras also follow Dowd, who can be seen on two large screens at opposite ends of the space; when she is portraying a conversation between two characters, two shots of her are visible, the camera cutting back and forth between them. (The projections and video are by Tal Yarden, with lighting by Natasha Chivers.)

Ann Dowd plays multiple characters in interactive Enemy of the People at Park Ave. Armory (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Enemy of the People could only happen at the armory, in its massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall, which has recently been home to Steven Hoggett, Christine Jones, and David Byrne’s SOCIAL! the social distance dance club, Laurie Anderson and Jason Moran’s Party in the Bardo, and Bill T. Jones’s Afterwardsness as the pandemic lockdown lifts. The limited audience, all of whom must be vaccinated, is seated in pods of two to five at socially distanced rectangular tables that are equipped with a small desktop monitor that plays a commercial, mimics the internet, and presents questions for each group to answer by pressing one of two buttons; the results affect which direction the narrative follows, so each show is different. (It also accounts for why there are Teleprompters on the floor scrolling the dialogue for Dowd to scan, since there are several possible variations that would be nearly impossible to memorize.)

The tables are situated on a giant map of Weston Springs, as if each pod is a house on a particular street. The audience is given sixty seconds to discuss each question among themselves and arrive at one answer; the queries range from the relatively innocuous choice between coffee or tea to the more serious decision whether to go public with Joan’s findings or proceed carefully to minimize panic.

Emmy winner Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale, Night Is a Room) is hypnotic, evoking a kind of easygoing Our Town demeanor with occasional blasts of emotion as characters get angry. I got mad at myself whenever I started watching her onscreen, preferring to experience her in reality. Icke, who has previously put his imprimatur on Ibsen’s The Wild Duck and A Doll’s House, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and Ivanov, Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Orwell’s 1984 on Broadway, has done a sublime job of translating a nineteenth-century story into the present, evoking not only the water crisis in Flint but how Americans talk to one another today, with partisan politics leading to fights over nearly every aspect of contemporary life and the very act of voting itself. It’s a sad tale, one that doesn’t appear to have any easy answers. It’s also sad that the show had to be canceled; whatever Dowd’s personal situation is, we wish her the best.

SLOPPY BONNIE: A ROADKILL MUSICAL (FOR THE MODERN CHICK!)

Jesus (James Rudolph II) and Bonnie (Amanda Disney) go for a drive in Sloppy Bonnie

SLOPPY BONNIE
No Puppet Co
Through July 15, $10
www.sloppybonnie.com

John Waters’s Serial Mom meets The Dukes of Hazzard in No Puppet Co.’s campy, devilishly sly Sloppy Bonnie: A Roadkill Musical (for the Modern Chick!), streaming through July 15. Yes, it can get overly silly and repetitive and feels stretched out at ninety minutes, but it’s also tons of fun. Filmed in front of a live audience on an outdoor stage at OZ Arts in Nashville in June, Sloppy Bonnie has been enhanced for online viewing with all-out-goofy cartoonish animation, from abstract shapes and handwritten text to such scenic elements as trees, chairs, doors, buildings, signs, animals, and car parts, as if someone was having a blast playing around with various Instagram stickers. (The illumination and design is by Phillip Frank.)

Amanda Disney stars as the title character, a southern gal in a denim skirt and checkered gingham shirt who is on the road in her 1972 pink Chevy Nova to see her fiancé, Jedidiah, a youth pastor in training at Camp New Life Bay on Shotgun Mountain. Her story is being told by Chauncy (Curtis Reed) and Dr. Rob (James Rudolph II), the hosts of Cosmic Country Radio. “Your Morning Moral this morning is the moral of the American Woman,” Dr. Rob announces. This American woman, a special ed teacher in Sulfur Springs, is hell-bent on getting what she wants, willing to use her feminine wiles as she travels through the south, meeting up with numerous dudes, some of whom, for one reason or another, end up dead. (All the minor characters are played by either Reed or Rudolph II.)

Among those Bonnie encounters are Chris and Bryan, who want to do more than just help fix her car when it breaks down; Trucker Joe, from whom she wrangles a ride; her friend Sissy; her estranged momma; high school choir leader Sondra and her bestie, Missy; Dandy the Lonesome Rodeo Clown; and Jesus. Each set piece features a song, with such titles as “You Might Call Me Basic,” “My Way or Bust,” “McNugget of Your Love,” and, perhaps most important, “Let’s Address the Nativity Chicken,” with the score paying tribute to Hank Williams, Kid Rock, Johnny Cash, and Charlie Daniels along the way.

Virtual edition of Sloppy Bonnie features fun visual tricks

“We set out on our journey / While the dew’s still on the grass,” Jesus and Bonnie sing in the duet “Jesus Riding Shotgun.” Jesus: “Bonnie tells her whole life story / Over half a tank of gas.” Bonnie: “Jesus reads aloud the names of all the little towns we pass / With his hand hung out his window / Lettin’ air blow through his nail hole.” As she gets closer to Jedidiah, leaving behind a trail of blood, she doesn’t necessarily come to some hard realizations about faith, family, and free will. She’s also searching to find out why she was cast as a chicken in the Nativity Manger Parade. “What exactly did a chicken have to do with sweet baby Jesus?” she asks. “I suppose there could always have been one in the barn where they had to sleep. But then why would the chicken be parading in with the wise men? Does chicken travel well? Why was there a nativity chicken? Why am I here, Mamma?” (The choreography and chicken movement is by Gabrielle Saliba.)

Directed by Leah Lowe and written by playwright Krista Knight and composer Barry Brinegar of No Puppet Co., who last summer presented the six-part virtual puppet play Crush, made in Knight and Brinegar’s home studio in the East Village, Sloppy Bonnie can, um, get a bit sloppy and the dialogue and lyrics are not exactly razor-sharp, but its DIY sensibility, the carnivalesque music, and the joy expressed every second by Disney, Reed, and Rudolph II are infectious. The show does comment on misogyny, sexism, marriage, motherhood, and feminine toxicity — 3D oval eggs appear often onscreen — so don’t let the message get lost in all the mayhem. And you get it all for a mere ten bucks.

WE’RE GONNA DIE

Regina Aquino stars in Round House Theatre’s virtual version of Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die

WE’RE GONNA DIE
Round House Theatre online
Available on demand through July 25, $32.50
www.roundhousetheatre.org

One of the last in-person plays I saw before the pandemic lockdown was Second Stage’s dynamic, ebullient version of Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die. Near the end, silver balloons bearing the name of the show were released from the ceiling of the Tony Kiser Theater, gently drifting down on the audience. I brought two home, and, remarkably, one of them is still partially filled, resting on top of a shelf where I see it every day. It is a symbol of the resilience of the human spirit, and of theater itself, which is on its way back after a difficult time.

Sixteen months later, Maryland’s Round House Theatre has mounted a more subdued but still powerful virtual version of the sixty-five-minute show, filmed live with a masked, limited, socially distanced audience and streaming through July 11. We’re Gonna Die consists of a series of first-person true stories and accompanying songs that look at how we approach and deal with impermanence. It was originally staged by Lee and her band, Future Wife, at Joe’s Pub in 2011 and then at Lincoln Center’s Clare Tow Theater in 2013. Raja Feather Kelly tore the roof off with his production at Second Stage, which took place in a hospital waiting room and featured a breakout performance by Janelle McDermoth.

At Round House, Regina Aquino stars as the narrator and singer, who relates the tales as if they all happened to her. (They were actually compiled from friends and relatives of Lee’s.) She runs up the steps, writhes across the floor, and jumps up and down on Paige Hathaway’s two-level set, which features bold colors and graphic symbols, with the musicians of the Chance Club each in their own large, homey cubicle: bassist Jason Wilson, keyboardist Laura Van Duzer, guitarist Matthew Schleigh, and drummer Manny Arciniega. The evening begins with an original composition by the Chance Club, “Wagons and Stars,” to set the mood, and then the show kicks off with the first of six vignettes that cover a wide spectrum of age and health, from the innocence of children to the isolation of growing old, exploring insomnia, the health-care system, family responsibilities, friendship, and generational angst, including “Lullaby for the Miserable,” “Comfort for the Lonely,” “When You Get Old,” and “Horrible Things.”

“I would have horrible nightmares and wake up with this feeling of dread that I was gonna die the exact way my father did,” Aquino says, talking about having trouble sleeping. “And if anyone tried to help me, I would just get angrier and angrier, and no one could do anything.” In the propulsive “I Still Have You,” she declares, “You still have me / I’m in your bed / I’ll hold your hand / until you’re dead / If I die first / you’ll be alone / but until then / you’ll have a home.”

Regina Aquino shares stories of loneliness and loss amid rocking songs in We’re Gonna Die

The show is fluidly directed and choreographed by Paige Hernandez, with cinematography by Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, costumes by Ivania Stack, sound by Mathew M. Nielson, and lighting by Harold F. Burgess II, making it a successful hybrid that is anchored by Aquino’s (The Events, Eureka Day) warm, intimate performance that will have you hanging on her every word.

In the grand finale, “I’m Gonna Die,” everyone joins in for a celebratory chorus that is filled with hope after a year in which more than six hundred thousand American died of Covid-19. The show has always had a positive outlook, but it hits a little deeper now. We all have developed a very different relationship with mortality, so don’t be surprised when you join in, with a smile on your face, as Aquino sings, “I’m gonna die / I’m gonna die someday / Then I’ll be gone / And it’ll be OK.”

In my March 2020 review of Kelly’s production at Second Stage, I wrote, “‘There’s a very good chance you’re not going to die,’ President Trump said when news about the coronavirus crisis was first spreading. While that might be true when it comes to Covid-19, it’s not true in general.” Indeed, what a year and a half it has been, as that balloon can attest.

The stream is available on demand through July 25; you can watch a panel discussion with Aquino, dramaturg Naysan Mojgani, and others here.

TINY HOUSE

Westport Country Playhouse’s virtual Tiny House is streaming through July 18

TINY HOUSE
Westport Country Playhouse
Through July 18, $25 per viewer, $100 per household
www.westportplayhouse.org

In Westport Country Playhouse’s virtual version of Michael Gotch’s first full-length play, Tiny House, Sam (Sara Bues), referring to her childhood, says, “I still hate fireworks.” Her mother, Billie (Elizabeth Heflin), asks, “You do?” Sam responds, “Yeah, they scare me. Like gunshots. Or someone jumping out and yelling boo! They don’t feel like a celebration. They feel like bad surprises.”

There are a lot of fireworks and bad surprises in store for the wisecracking Billie, the ultraserious Sam, Sam’s snarky husband, Nick (Denver Milord), and Billie’s second husband, the goofy but likable Larry (Lee E. Ernst), as the family comes together for the Fourth of July holiday at Sam and Nick’s new, and extremely small, eco-conscious house in the mountains. Billie is used to the finer things in life, which changed when her first husband was sent to prison; she also has very different political views than Nick does, leading to some vicious battles.

“Solar, bio-friendly, 100% recycled materials, tiny carbon footprint, completely self-sustaining. We’re like pioneers, I guess,” Nick explains. “My firm got Interior Design magazine up here after we finished the build, did a shoot; they’re going to follow the story for the first year or so. In installments.”

“Nice,” Larry says.

Nick adds, “Sam’s writing the copy for it —”

“—in monthly installments —” Sam cuts him off.

“Nice!” Larry repeats.

“— like a real-time journal,” Nick says.

“The Donner party kept a journal, too,” Billie snipes. “For a while.”

They are soon joined by neighbors Win (Stephen Pelinski) and Carol (Kathleen Pirkl-Tague), Renaissance Faire veterans who arrive in Medieval (and, later, Middle-Earth) costumes and make such pronouncements as “Hear ye! Hear ye! Kingdoms Major and Kingdoms Minor! Your Monarch
approacheth! Tremble and be amazed!” and “Zounds, he knows! / A fellow traveller!”

Meanwhile, another neighbor, Bernard (Hassan El-Amin), is a Keats-spouting, marmot-offering, well-armed survivalist who believes the end of the world is coming. “My sources are active. Triangulated and triple sourced,” he warns Nick and Sam, continuing, “Verifiable intel, not misdirection. Multiple potential flash points worldwide. Zero Hour feel to it.” Nick responds, “I don’t know, you know? Stuff I’m hearing just feels like garden-variety neo-Cold War saber rattling if you ask me.” As the fireworks approach, so does the sturm und drang as dark family truths emerge amid one key piece of advice for all to heed: “Don’t fuck with an elf.”

The show was originally workshopped with a different cast at Westport in 2018 and performed in January 2019 by the Resident Ensemble Players at the University of Delaware under the title Minor Fantastical Kingdoms, with that cast reuniting for this virtual edition, with playhouse artistic director Mark Lamos helming all three iterations. Part of Westport’s ninetieth anniversary virtual 2021 season, the one-hundred-minute Tiny House is tailor made for this moment in time as we emerge from lockdown, when we faced isolation and loneliness, unable to see friends and family for more than a year as we fought over politics and sought bits of joy in unexpected places.

Tiny House was filmed by Lacey Erb with the actors in different locations, performing in front of green screens, employing methods mastered by the Irish Rep; in fact, the digital design, which includes benches, chairs, and couches that make it appear that the actors are together in the same space and looking out at the forest and a vast mountain landscape, is by longtime Irish Rep designer Charlie Corcoran, based on Hugh Landwehr’s original set. Dan Scully served as editor, with costumes by Tricia Barsamian (Will and Carol’s getups are particularly fun and fanciful) and music and sound by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen.

The cast is highlighted by a wickedly delicious turn by Heflin (The Government Inspector, The Odd Couple), who never misses a beat as we learn more about her character’s situation, and Bues (Falling Away, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window) as Billie’s daughter, who is having issues dealing with the sins of her parents. The show will be available on demand through July 18; you can check out a symposium about the work here, and there will be a talkback on July 12. Next up for Westport is John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable in November.