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Matthew Stadelmann, Tiffany Villarin, Brooke Bloom and Paul Niebanck
Photo: Bill Breymer

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Who: Actors Theatre of Louisville
What: The Grown-Up by Jordan Harrison
When: March 7 – April 6, 2014
Where: 38th Humana Festival of New American Plays

Ten-year-old Kai (Matthew Stadelmann) is enthralled when his grandfather (Paul Niebanck) tells him a story about a magical doorknob fashioned from a crystal eye of the mermaid figurehead from an ancient ship.  Pop the doorknob off, his grandfather tells him, and place it on another door, and that door will magically take you somewhere else. 

Playing hide and seek with his sister (Brooke Bloom), Kai decides to put the story to the test—and suddenly finds himself an adult writer, taking a meeting with a comically fast-taking TV producer (Chris Murray) and trying to sell a story about a magical doorknob.

From that point on, each use of the doorknob seems to push Kai farther ahead in the timeline of his life while his sister chases after him through a chronological maze that includes a side trip to a room that contains one of every magical object in the world (they all come in pairs, don't you know…).  And their story begins to increasingly resemble the one that Kai wrote as a youngster—the story that began his literary career.

"The Grown-Up" works on multiple levels.  It's both a magical adventure tale and a reflection on the mutability of human memory.  Most notably, it's an impressive dramatization of how, with age, the past tends to fuse into a big cognitive lump, and last year becomes increasingly difficult to separate from the last decade.  As Amy Wegener writes in her program notes, "the play evokes the dizzying sense of how fast life goes, how remarkably difficult it is to construct a satisfying complete narrative out of our time on earth." 

Has Kai actually become a Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time?  Or is he just reconstructing his life in retrospect, using his first successful short story as a template? As was the case with Mr. Harrison's excellent "Maple and Vine" from four years ago, the refusal to spell everything out makes for appealing and thoughtful comedy and drama.

As is usually the case with Actors Theatre shows, the cast was talented and versatile.  Mr. Stadelmann and Ms. Bloom managed the neat trick of convincingly portraying children who are simultaneously adults.  Mr. Niebanck's gramps was wise and wily.  Mr. Murray's glad-handing TV producer (and magic item guardian) was hilarious.  Tiffany Villarin and David Ryan Smith very effectively took on multiple roles and provided second-person narration as needed.

The play was greatly enhanced by polished and precise direction by Ken Run Schmoll, atmospheric lighting by Paul Toben and original music and sound by Linsday Jones.  James Schuette's sets and costumes were minimal by design.  "The special effects in my newest plays are the actors themselves, and the language," notes Mr. Harrison.  He separates all his work into "plays with furniture" vs. "plays without furniture."  "The Grown-Up" is one of the latter, which should make it a good candidate for small companies looking for a new work for their seasons.

At 70 minutes with no intermission, "The Grown-Up" felt (as do the majority of recent plays, in my experience) like a play that wanted to be a film.  That's not necessarily a criticism, as it's a fine and satisfying script, but I do sometimes long for the days when there were actual intermissions at the theatre.