I’m fresh back from 12 hours of new play-going at the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville (10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday).
I’ll start with a few observations:
- I caught all or part of five of six main stage entries and it’s a good year. I didn’t see one total clunker – even if a play wasn’t stellar, the idea that drove it was worth exploring. And, really, that’s what a festival is about.
- If you wanted to identify a theme, it would be youth. Lee Blessings’ “Great Falls” is centered on a relationship between an ex-stepfather and his estranged teenaged stepdaughter; “the break/s” is a hip-hop bio that explores the love of Marc Bamuthi Joseph, who writes and performs; “Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom” attempts to meld theater with video game.
- It has been suggested that The Civilians’ “This Beautiful City,” all about the evangelical movement in Colorado Springs, will be the breakout hit from Humana, but my vote is for Gina (“After Ashley) Gionfriddo’s shuddery black comedy “Becky Shaw.”
- When Playhouse in the Park starts seriously designing a theater, it should consider including standing room. Actors Theatre does this cool thing with $20 use-anytime standing room tickets, and a free standing room option. The $20 tickets are given prioriyy. For the matinee of “Becky Shaw” that I attended, everyone was seated. Being broke, I opted for the free ticket, and I got a seat, too. The free option seems to be taken advantage mostly by college students. Love it.
On to capsule reviews:
“Becky Shaw” – I’ve been a fan-fan-fan of Gionfriddo for a while. A product of Brown University’s legendary playwriting program, she’s employed by “Law & Order.” (Watch for her credits.) I liked her blisteringly funny, media-directed rage in “After Ashley,” which premiered at Humana in 2004. (It was done locally by Know Theatre last year, although they softened it up.) “Ashley” kind of fell apart, but Gionfriddo gave us plenty to think about.
The title character in “Becky Shaw” is an emotional vampire disguised as a joke. Interestingly, it’s more of a horror story than fellow Brownie Jennifer Haley’s purposeful terrors of “Neighborhood 3.”
“Becky Shaw” is laugh-out-loud nasty funny in its tale of deeply, madly flawed people and particularly of a couple who, in another playwright’s hands, would be at the center of a romantic comedy but you know they’re not going to have that good luck here. The play is a satisfactory exploration of toxic relationships and how we end up in them.
As long as I’ve mentioned Haley, I’ll move on toe “Neighborhood 3.” Haley was a favorite of Women’s Theatre Initiative, when it was functioning a few years back, and we got a look at her intriguing “Dreampuffs of War” and “The Butcher’s Daughter.”
“Neighborhood 3” is heavy-handed: kids don’t talk to parents, parents don’t want to know the worst stuff about their kids and suddenly you have Columbine – or a murderous rampage on a suburban cul-de-sac, where nobody can tell the difference between the game and reality (if there is any) but there are monsters out there that Must Be Destroyed.
“Neighborhood 3” was presented in ATL’s tiny Victor Jory Theatre, and the production design amounted to basic black – a floor that suggested it would have reflective qualities, a rear wall entirely of diamond hard angles. It would have been intriguing to see a mutli-media production that took advantage of Haley’s concept, that global positioning puts the action where the kids live, and that would have brought the audience into play.
Haley’s points would still be – so what else is new? – but creating some suggestion of the game would have a visceral punch.
“This Beautiful City” is a musical built on interviews with the folks of Colorado Springs, which, over the years, has become the unofficial headquarters of the American evangelical movement, home to the New Life Church and Focus on the Family.
Topical? You’d better believe it, especially as “This Beautiful City” considers how the evangelicals interact with the area’s strong military presence, to say nothing of the more moderate townspeople, and the fall from grace of New Life pastor Ted Haggard. But the music is a yawn and the script is much too long. Less would be much more.
Lee Blessing’s ambiguous “Great Falls” is about a road trip across the Badlands (and along the route of Lewis and Clark), about a middle-aged guy who wants to re-connect with the step-kids he lost when he divorced their mother. He starts with the girl who’s about to turn 18.
Every one of us in the audience brings our own stuff into the theater with us, and it may just be that this well-crafted play turned me off because I have the sneaky feeling Blessing thinks his guy, if not a hero, is at least average, and simply caught up in situations beyond his ability to deal. I think he’s a creep. And for a slice-of-life drama, a lot of Blessing’s plot turns are near operatic (that is – over the top.)
Before Joseph’s “the break/s” begins, a guy with a mic comes into the audience and asks us questions – what do we think of women hip-hop performers? What is hip-hop theater? If we had one question we could ask Jay Z, what would it be? If jazz is the broom Africans jump over to become Americans, then what is hip-hop?
Audience members were game but lacked enlightening answers; Joseph addresses each of his questions in autobiographical “the break/s,” which runs about 70 minutes and uses different aspects of his life – his travels, his romances, his art – to explore who he is as a man. Video of performance and interviewees with their own answers play on overhead screens.
It’s the kind of slight but thoughtful, smart and contemporary show that belongs in a festival setting, bringing in an outside voice one would never otherwise hear. I’m glad it made the cut in this year’s Humana.
I missed Carly Mensch’s “All Hail Hurricane Gordo.”
If you’ve already caught Humana, or are going next week – let me know what you think.
Jackie Demaline
