Humana stage goes dark

At age 31, fest in no mood to make light of politics

Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 7, 2007 at midnight

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The 31st Humana Festival of New American Plays made one thing perfectly clear: The light, frothy comedy is dead.

Playwrights seem determined to explore the political landscape, be it in the guise of war or families in turmoil. It's a path that provokes much thought but little laughter.

This year's slate of six full-length productions at the festival in Louisville, Ky., explored myriad subjects, but there was no standout play, no supernova of theatrical exposition. There was, however, plenty of darkness visible.

In the cell

One imagines that Craig Wright's The Unseen was inspired by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. Two men (Richard Bekins and Gregor Paslawsky) talk from opposite sides of a cell wall in a totalitarian prison. They exchange notes on how they were tortured by guards and speculate on the outside world. Their only contact with that world is a jailer (Richard Furlong) showing the strain of having to play the emotional brute.

Wright deftly captures the horror of torture without showing it, and the sense of claustrophobia that accompanies incarceration. Is this a pro- or antiwar play? Nope. It's anti-violence.

On the Net

In dark play or stories for boys, playwright Carlos Murillo explores the technical dexterity of a 14-year (Matthew Stadelmann) on the Internet. Nick is looking for thrills that allow him to remain anonymous, so he creates a fictional 16- year-old girl named Rachel, sticks her in a chat room and hooks an emotionally needy fish named Adam (Will Rogers).

Despite Adam's insistence that he meet Rachel, Nick keeps him at bay until he finally poses as Rachel's little brother and agrees to meet Adam. That leads to a sexual assignation, which leads to even more questions from Adam. How can Nick keep this relationship from faltering? He must find a way to kill off Rachel.

There's nothing more topical than the predatory dimension of the Web, and Murillo shrewdly exploits parental fears. The trouble is that his play spirals from the believable to the absurd. He had us at "hello" and then dropped us like a bad date.

Ideology express

The one-actor play is alive and well in Sherry Kramer's When Something Wonderful Ends. Rather, it's alive and not so well.

Sherry (Lori Wilner) has returned to her childhood home in Springfield, Mo., to pack up after her mother's death. She's spread the toys of her youth around the living room - dozens of Barbies and their dream houses and cars. As she lovingly puts them into boxes, she reflects on how moments of her childhood have brought her and the world to the war in Iraq.

Her concern is less the injustice of the war than America's ongoing role in the Middle East. Oil is the root of all evil, Sherry proclaims as she details the U.S. role in backing the Shah and how his fall led to near-universal condemnation of Americans in that part of the world.

Nostalgia is a potent theatrical tool, but here it gets steamrolled by ideology. By the end of this angrily partisan play, you're praying for Bill O'Reilly to show up in a tank.

Dance fever

Periodically, the Humana Festival showcases a performance-art piece that aims to blur the line between traditional theater and multimedia. This year it was Batch: An American Bachelor/ette Party Spectacle, conceived by Alice Tuan and director Whit Maclaughlin and created by New Paradise Laboratories of Philadelphia.

Set at a local disco (the production took place in a Louisville dance club), the piece opens with a group of women planning the bachelorette party of Betsy (McKenna Kerrigan) while across town male friends are doing the same for her betrothed, Taggis (Aaron Mumaw).

What begins as two very distinct parties suddenly melds into one, with women donning men's clothing and vice versa. Video screens around the stage capture the action live then jump-cut to prerecorded scenes of the bride and groom walking down hotel hallways.

The idea is to create a sense of the surreal, which this one does in spades. But while Batch may visually and intellectually assault, it's not entertaining. This is the downside of laboratory creativity: Everyone gets a say and no one has a point.

Saving the healer

Not so The As If Body Loop, perhaps the most commercially viable play at this year's festival even if it does traffic in metaphysics.

Aaron (Marc Grapey), the eldest son of a Jewish family, makes his living editing NFL highlight reels. He's summoned back to the family's New York home when his younger sister Sarah (Kristen Fiorella) comes down with a mysterious illness. Her body temperature keeps plummeting. Could it be that she's a Jewish "channeler" who takes on the pain of the world?

Mom (Jana Robbins) is a holistic healer, and little brother Glenn (Josh Lefkowiz) is her apprentice. But Aaron is the chosen one. Only he can end Sarah's suffering by finding one of her social-work clients (Keith Randolph Smith) and helping to alleviate his pain.

There's humor, pathos and mysticism in this quirky play, but also a strong theme of responsibility. We each share the burden of our fellow man's pain, argues playwright Ken Weitzman. If we see someone suffering, we should try to help.

If that sounds Pollyannaish, Weitzman packages it in such a way that we're seduced. A fine cast and endearing writing leave us wanting to be saints.

Emotional tremors

For those who argue that movies and theater have too much crossover, there was Naomi Iizuka's Strike-Slip, the title referring to what happens at an earthquake fault to cause a tremor. The play finds three stories intersecting:

• Seismologist Frank Richmond (Tim Altimeter) and his wife, Rachel (Heather Lea Anderson), have no sooner moved into their dream home than Frank embarks on a gay affair.

• In the Korea Town section of Los Angeles, grocer Lee Sung Ho (Nelson Washita) raises his teenage daughter Angie (Ali Han) with a firm hand. Little does he know she's about to run away with her boyfriend, a mechanic named Rafael (Justin Hen).

• Rafael's mother (Romi Dias) is the Realtor who sold the Morses their home. She worries that her little boy has grown into a teenager with a mind of his own.

There's a shooting in this play that cauterizes the disparate plots, but Iizuka has a deft touch in depicting the intersection of lives in a big city. Like Crash, it almost has a documentary feel, but unlike the movies, live acting can be brutal and honest.

Humana at a glance

• The Unseen: Two inmates in a totalitarian prison discuss life and escape from opposite sides of a stone wall in Craig Wright's work. A telling look at torture and the freedom of the mind.

GRADE: B

• dark play or stories about boys: A 14-year-old uses the Internet to lure another teen into a sexual relationship by posing as someone he's not. Carlos Murillo's look at the dark side of modern technology segues from feisty to far-fetched.

GRADE: C+

• Strike-Slip: The stage equivalent of the Oscar-winning movie Crash. Naomi Iizuka shows three families affected by a shooting, but mostly by a lack of communication.

GRADE: B

• When Something Wonderful Ends: This one-woman play by Sherry Kramer uses a platoon of Barbies to explore childhood and the war in Iraq. An interesting idea veers from soliloquy to political diatribe.

GRADE: C

• The As If Body Loop: The metaphysical meets the dysfunctional family in Ken Weitzman's entertaining romp about self-help.

GRADE: B+

• Batch: An American Bachelor/ette Party Spectacle: Is Alice Tuan's work performance art or avant-garde theater? Doesn't matter. It's a mess.

GRADE: D

pearsonm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2592

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