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Regional Reviews: St. Louis LaBute New Theater Festival Also see Richard's review of My Heart Says Go
And colorful as it is, this year's festival never devolves into a freak show. But it is sometimes a vaudeville of psychological magic acts, along with a few cruel ventriloquisms thrown in for good measure: voices from a past or future that none of these characters can ever truly inhabit. There are no second acts, but there is an intermission, in this two hour and fifteen minute variety pack. Playwright Neil LaBute contributes a fine story, and is on the script selection team as well, as is William Roth, the founder of the St. Louis Actors' Studio, with eight others. This year they've put together a highly concentrated evening that bursts open and engulfs us like wildfire, before dissolving into the glowing embers of the deepest human experience. The opening act is flat-out comedy, Grief and Woe written by Paul Bowman and directed by Spencer Sickmann. Greg Hunsaker plays a Larry David-like God, and Chuck Winning a winking, insinuating serpent. Together they shove a childlike Adam and Eve around like game pieces in the Garden of Eden for their own amusement (and ours). Tyler Crandall and Lorelei Frank are adorable as their mortal playthings. And a subtle, koan-like wisdom arises from their conflict and sacrifice, which bookends nicely with the evening's final piece. Cage, by Barbara Blatner and directed by Kristi Gunther, explodes into madness right away, as an animal-loving teenager brings her own serpent home to her mother's small apartment. Lorelei Frank returns as the teen, and Jane Paradise is explosive as the terrified pack-rat mom who needs a rebellious daughter to shake her out of her own hoarded-up terrarium. The terrible isolation of both women is memorable, each in their own way. The animalistic first half of the evening climaxes with a wild new turn in Walrus by Brandt Adams and directed by Kristi Gunther. It's a roughneck comedy set in a dive bar populated by marine mammals, where the snarky chat centers on the effects of global warming on their lives in the wild. Anthony Wininger is the loudmouth drunken walrus of the title, telling a manatee (sympathetic Tyler Crandall) about a desperate confrontation with a dying polar bear on an isolated rock out at sea. It's funny because of the desultory saloon setting, but gasp-inducing because of the anthropomorphism of a ruthless natural drama, with only ourselves to blame. And because the bartender (Greg Hunsaker) also happens to be a long-suffering polar bear, himself. Whiskey is knocked back, fluffy tails are sent flying, and comical tusks are ripped away, as our dreadful fixation on a global crisis is spun into anguished laughs. Abby Pastorello and Carina Robb are the expert costume and wardrobe team, with props by Emma Glose, and a set designed by Patrick Huber. Intermission! Everything about the lives of men seems to twitch nervously on stage in Who's on First by Neil LaBute and directed by Kristi Gunther. A loudmouthed father has been pulled from the bleachers at a little league game by his son's baseball coach. Anthony Wininger plays the dad, trying to get his son off the bench, and Chuck Winning returns as the grizzled coach who stands in his way. All sorts of power dynamics, and strategies both base and profound, come into focus from one moment to the next. Until one man realizes he may have outmaneuvered himself. Ultimately, we come to Love in the Time of Nothing, a memory play about forgetting. It's by Jayne Hannah and directed by Spencer Sickmann, featuring Jane Paradise and Greg Hunsaker as a married couple struggling with his early-onset Alzheimer's disease. It's the most stunning piece of the evening, and there was a jarring "twilight" moment in the lighting design by Patrick Huber early on that I'm going to say was intentional, on the night I attended. But, accidental or not, the symbolism of that strange twilight cue seemed perfectly expressionistic. "You not only lose them, but yourself, too," Julienna (the terrific Ms. Paradise) ruminates, as the stories of her husband's twilight awareness and cognitive decline proliferate. In their thrashing around, all the new medicines and nursing home prohibitions they suddenly face begin to seem like a police state they can't escape, or even allow themselves to despise. Mr. Hunsaker (excellent as David) goes in and out of lucidity and later plays the voices of the cold comforters in Julienna's ear. But the story also turns witty and fun as Julienna contrives a magic act of her own, making car keys and wallets seemingly appear and disappear, to keep David out of trouble. It all turns strangely poetic, as David flashes back to his own joyful, intellectual lectures on the nature of love, still alive, among the ruins. St. Louis Actors' Studio's LaBute New Theater Festival runs through July 28, 2024, at the Gaslight Theater, 360 N. Boyle Avenue, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.gaslighttheater.net. Cast: Production Staff: * Denotes Member, Actors' Equity Association |
