At the Humana Festival, "Wellesley Girl" displays untapped potential

L-R: Jeff Biehl, Pun Bandhu, Lynda Gravátt, Kelly McAndrew
Photo: Bill Brymer

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One of the great things about the Humana Festival of New American Plays is the valuable exposure it gives to new playwrights.  Their work is sometimes rough around the edges or even, as is the case with Brendan Pelsue's Wellesley Girl at this year's festival, a bit of a mess.  But as far as artistic growth goes, there's just no substitute for the experience of seeing one's work performed by a professional company for a paying audience.

The concept behind Wellesley Girl is intriguing, especially during our fractious political season.  Set in the year 2465, the play takes place in a walled enclave in New England whose 435 inhabitants are, as far as they know, the sole surviving population of the United States of America.  They're all members of Congress, and the Supreme Court is now one woman—the only one with legal training and the books to back it up.

Barney O'Hanlon, Rachael Leslie
Photo: Bill Brymer

Their stable if limited world is threatened when an army from Texas suddenly and inexplicably shows up, insisting that they are the real U.S. government and making a list of impossible demands.  The population soon splits into two camps, one insisting on negotiation and another on "scorched earth", which appears to mean abandoning the enclave and fleeing into the wilderness.  Neither alternative makes much sense, though, since the invading army appears to be invincible and the water supply outside of the enclave is supposedly poisoned.  Only the enclave's filtration system makes it drinkable.

This setup has the potential to offer a satirical look at our current political dysfunction and possibly an examination of how people behave when there are no good choices.  Unfortunately it offers neither.  The arguments among the enclave's residents become little more than shouting matches and the moral dilemma they face becomes buried in political maneuvering. 

L-R: Philip Taratula, Jeff Biehl
Photo: Bill Brymer

The plot also doesn't hold up to much scrutiny and much of it simply makes no sense.  If the water is poisoned, what are the mighty Texas forces drinking?  How did they even find out about the New Englanders in the first place, given that there appears to be no communication infrastructure?  If the army has them surrounded, how will they escape to the woods? 

Worse yet, the feeble final scenes seem to indicate that the playwright simply wrote himself into a corner and couldn't find a way out.  When the final blackout came, nobody clapped because it wasn't clear whether or not the play had actually ended.

The show isn't without its moments.  A scene in which Donna, The Supreme Court (Lynda Gravátt) hears arguments at her kitchen table with a hand-made "SCOTUS" sign in the center have real charm.  And Barney O'Hanlon's robot Hank is a wonderfully precise piece of acting.  Indeed, the cast as a whole is quite good, even if some of the characters they portray are a bit one-dimensional.  There's also some real comedy in the public meetings before they descend into chaos.  But ultimately this play's reach far exceeds its grasp.

That said, this is still an interesting first effort, for all its flaws.  Mr. Plesue is clearly an original voice and, given that he is still working on his M.F.A., it's reasonable to assume that he might have a bright future ahead of him.  Very few creative people get everything right the first time, after all.

Wellesley Girl runs through April 10th in the Pamela Brown Auditorium at Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the 40th Humana Festival of New American Plays.

At the Humana Festival, Sarah Ruhl's "For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday" never quite gets off the ground

Scene 1
Photo: Bill Brymer

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"Having been unpopular in high school," observed Fran Lebowitz in her 1978 essay collection Metropolitan Life,  "is not just cause for book publication."  If she had seen Sarah Ruhl's For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, the world premiere of which is part of the 40th Humana Festival of New American Plays, she might have added that a death in the family is not just cause for play production.

As the play opens, five adult siblings (the oldest, Ann, is 70; the others are in their 50s and 60s) are gathered in the remarkably large hospital room of their comatose father George.  In what feels like the strongest of the play's three scenes, the siblings ruminate on death, the afterlife, and what it means to really be an adult.  The tension of waiting for the end that they both dread and anticipate is palpable and believable.

Scene 2
Photo: Bill Brymer

The remaining two scenes are less impressive.  In the first, Ann and her brothers and sisters gather in George's house for an impromptu wake.  Fueled by liberal doses of Jameson, they tell stories from their childhood, share jokes, and engage in political arguments which, given the play's setting during "the Clinton era", feel rather dated.  Meanwhile, the ghost of George wanders in and out, repeating the routines of his daily life—and generating some of the funniest moments.

Finally, everyone toddles off to bed and Ann, who serves as the play's narrator, dreams of repeating the role of Peter Pan—the part she played at a local theatre before heading off to college—with her siblings as the Darling family and brother Jim as Captain Hook.  Like the previous scene, it has no real dramatic shape and doesn't really go anywhere.  A final scene between Ann and her ghostly father suggests that she is coming to terms with his departure, but it essentially comes out of nowhere, dramatically speaking.

Scene 3
Photo: Bill Brymer

Kathleen Chalfant leads a strong cast as a sympathetic and engaging Ann.  There's good work here as well from Keith Reddin as Michael, David Chandler as Jim, Lisa Emery as Wendy, and Ron Crawford as the spectral George.  Barney O'Hanlon was a late substitution in the role of the youngest brother, John, but you wouldn't have known that from his assured performance.

Les Waters directs with a sure eye for both the comedy and drama in the script, but even so For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday is a bit too specifically autobiographical for its own good.  It feels less like a play for a general audience than a home video.  Ms. Ruhl is a highly regarded playwright with a string of frequently performed and justifiably praised shows, though, so I'm inclined to cut her a little slack with this one.

For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday runs through April 10th in the Pamela Brown Auditorium at Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the 40th Humana Festival of New American Plays. 

At the Humana Festival, student interns deliver a "Wondrous Strange" collection of ghost stories

Hannah Karpenko in "The Bonnets"
Photo: Bill Brymer

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Every edition of the Humana Festival features a program of short one-act plays organized around a common theme and performed by the students of the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Acting Apprentice Company.  This year's show, Wondrous Strange—which takes its title from Horatio's exclamation of astonishment after seeing the ghost of Hamlet's father ("O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!")—focuses on ghosts and the supernatural.

"Kentucky's supernatural lore fills anthology after anthology," writes Jessica Reese in the program book, "and every year, thousands of visitors head to the state's haunted landmarks, from posh hotels and mansions to dive bars and Civil War sites…This season, four fearless writers—Martyna Majok, Meg Miroshnik, Jiehae Park, and Jen Silverman—have been invited to venture into the spirit realm and examine the unexplained and the uncanny."

L-R: Alejandro Hernandez, Addison Williams
Jayson Speters in "Ghost Bros"
Photo: Bill Brymer

The resulting short (70 minute) collection of nine plays, sketches, and "blackouts" is a bit uneven, but taken as a whole it's great fun and performed with skill and versatility by a company of 20 talented young actors.  Even though we saw it at a 10:30 a.m. matinee, the show still created an appropriately spooky atmosphere, punctuated with moments of inspired comedy.

Most of the latter comes from Jen Silverman's two contributions. "Ghost Bros" is a hilariously on-target send-up of supernatural "reality" TV and juvenile macho as the titular "bros" (Alejandro Hernandez, Jayson Speters, and Addison Williams) blunder their way through a long-abandoned insane asylum in unsuccessful pursuit of a ghostly little girl (Walls Trimble). "The Bonnets", which concludes the show, is an enthusiastic celebration of murder and mayhem by the female members of the company, dressed in modest nightgowns and bonnets.

Martyna Majok contributes one of the best pieces, a touching little character study about an inexperienced prostitute (Glenna Brucken) who advertises herself as a psychic to stay ahead of the law, only to discover that her customer (Mr. Hernandez) is really interested in a reading.  Instead of playing this for laughs, Ms. Majok makes it a charming portrait of two troubled people looking for comfort in a cold world.

Tracey Green in "Something Like"
Photo: Bill Brymer

One of the creepiest entries is Meg Miroshnik's "The Holler", about a group of friends who have made the mistake of trying to turn part of a former abattoir into an apartment—with unpleasant results.  Her zombie tale "Bug" is a close second, but I thought its predictability spoiled it a bit.

Jiehae Park's "Something Like" takes the ghost story into cyberspace as a young woman (Tracey Green) becomes addicted to interacting with an artificial intelligence program (Adenike Thomas) modeled after her deceased lover.  It downplays the supernatural element to deliver a moving illustration of how we deal with loss.

Directors Marti Lyons and John Rooney make good use of the Bingham Theatre's versatile space, assisted by Paul Toben's dramatic lighting and Christian Frederickson's sound, both of which go a long way towards establishing a disturbing atmosphere.

Wondrous Strange runs through April 10th at Actors Theatre of Louisville as part of the 40th Humana Festival of New American Plays. 

At the Humana Festival, "This Random World" abounds in comic coincidences

L-R: Shirine Babb and Beth Dixon
Photo: Bill Brymer

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One of the great pleasures of the novels of Charles Dickens is the often comical way in which he arranges for characters from very disparate walks of life to be connected, often by wildly improbable coincidences.  In his new comedy "This Random World," veteran comic playwright Steven Dietz stands that convention on its head. 

In Dietz's anti-Dickensian story, characters who are already related to each other, however tangentially, repeatedly miss making connections as a result of coincidences that are as unlikely and comical as anything the great British novelist ever dreamed up.

Renata Friedman and Todd Lawson
Photo: Bill Brymer

As the play opens, Scottie—in her 70s and ailing, but still energetic—is preparing for a trip to the Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto with her assistant and general dogsbody Bernadette.  Bernadette convinces Scottie to send Bernadette's younger sister Rhonda instead, but events conspire to force a last-minute cancellation on Scottie's part, sending Rhonda to Japan on her own.  Meanwhile, Scottie's daughter Beth, who believes her mother to be a shut-in, has taken off on an adventurous and expensive trip of her own to Nepal where, because of a missed connection, she is thrown together with Gary, a new-agey life coach and the ex-boyfriend of the outrageously neurotic Claire, who is the ex-girlfriend of Scottie's son Tim.

As for Tim, he's a failed writer and computer hacker whose already off-track life is sent into a genuine tailspin when his prank hack of a mortuary's server results in the publication of his own fictional obituary.  His attempts to explain to Rhonda—who just happens to work at said mortuary—that he is actually alive prove to be as funny as they are frustrating.

Nate Miller and Brenda Withers
Photo: Bill Brymer

I could have used the word "coincidentally" a lot in those last two paragraphs, but you get the idea.  As the characters' lives spin merrily out of control, the connections that might get them back on track are repeatedly missed in absurdly unlikely ways.  In one scene, for example, Bernadette just happens to leave her cell phone behind in a hospital waiting room at exactly the point when Beth, who just happens to have lost her cell, is calling from a pay phone to find out what's going on with Scottie.  As the phone rings, Tim just happens to walk in.  He answers it just as Beth impatiently hangs up.

Apparently, the phone just happens not to have voice mail.

Not all of the missed connections are funny, of course.  Dietz is too smart a playwright not to throw in a few scenes that are genuinely touching.  And those scenes work because, with the possible exception of the absurdly unhappy Claire, his characters are all well drawn and believable.

Deonna Bouye
Photo: Bill Brymer

The actors do well by these characters.  Brenda Withers's Beth is as confident as Nate Miller's Tim is lost and perennially baffled.  Beth Dixon is an appealingly feisty Scottie, nicely contrasting with Shirine Babb's patient Bernadette.  Todd Lawson's Gary is perfectly clueless and Deonna Bouye's Rhonda is hilariously motor-mouthed.  Dietz has made the role of Claire fairly one dimensional, but Renata Friedman makes her interesting nevertheless.

Dietz's script calls for a set that suggests "a world that is warm, mysterious and evocative", and designer Daniel Zimmerman has certainly delivered that.  Director Meredith McDonough keeps the action focused and smoothly flowing among the play's many scenes.

"This Random World" is essentially a one-joke play, but the variations on that joke are so ingenious that it never goes stale or wears out its welcome, remaining thoroughly entertaining right up to the surprising final scene.  Given its relatively simple technical demands, I'd expect it to start appearing on other regional stages in the coming years; it certainly deserves to be seen.

"The Random World" runs through April 10 at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, as part of the 40th Humana Festival of New American Plays.  For more information: actorstheatre.org.