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.