In a case of cutesy branding gone right, Mark Russell, producer of the new play fest Under the Radar, uses his program notes to describe the event's third season as "new theater on iPod shuffle mode."
It's true that the 15 shows, mostly staged by fest sponsor the Public Theater, offer a wide sampling of genres and subjects, but the notion of shuffling runs deeper. In four of the plays, whose runs ended Jan. 28, timelines get shattered and reassembled. Random bits of plot jut against each other until a new patchwork story appears.
These crooked narratives are more than structural gimmicks. By flouting expectations of how events will unfold, they find fresh life in familiar themes.
Death, for instance, seems more unusual when it happens to puppets. In "Famous Puppet Death Scenes," Canadian troupe the Old Trout Puppet Workshop stages the last moments of 23 fictional plays. Narrator (and marionette) Nathaniel Tweak insists that these are the most exquisite finales ever seen on the puppet stage.
He may be right. The Old Trout troupe shows boundless invention as they riff on their theme, swerving from bizarre comedy to touching sadness. Moments after a squeaky, googly-eyed children's show mascot gets eaten by a monster, a realistic puppet-man wanders through a storm. He calls for his lover, and her name flutters out of his mouth on parchment paper. Hanging in the air, his words offer tragically weak defense against the weather.
The creatives at Old Trout could easily coast on such virtuosity, wowing auds with their visual inventiveness and their mastery of many types of puppets. But these scenes are as well written as designed. Taken together, they offer a moving reminder that death is not only inevitable, but also surprising in its approach.
In the new play "Another You," the surprise is that solo performer/scribe Allen Johnson doesn't assign moral value to his life. Recounting his dysfunctional past -- violent temper, sexual addiction, horrifying childhood -- he speaks in the dry tone of a newscaster. Even when he's enacting harsh scenes with his body, his voice keeps a detached, analytical distance. This keeps the show fascinating, like watching a frog dissect itself.
Because he's not begging for specific reactions, Allen is free to contradict himself. Early stories of his father's sexual abuse are balanced by detailed descriptions of their happy times, including a conversation in the old man's pick-up truck that swells with nurturing love.
The sharp truth of "Another You" is that both these fathers are real. Allen forces auds to decide if they can accept the beast and the hero at the same time.
In "The Brothers Size," scribe Tarell Alvin McCraney turns good and evil into mythic enemies. The titular brothers may be an ex-con and a car mechanic, but they inhabit a ritualistic world where African drums punctuate speech, a white chalk circle becomes a border between reality and dreams, and words are sometimes sung like hymns.
These flourishes enhance the plot -- in which the "good" brother sacrifices everything to save the one who's drifting -- without overwhelming it. Too much drumming, for instance, becomes a nuisance, but McCraney and director Tea Alagic know how to balance metaphor with action. That may be why the play's heart is in its most realistic scene.
During an impromptu sing-along to Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness," co-stars Gilbert Owuor and Brian Tyree Henry show such a natural bond that they don't seem like actors. Their three minutes of joy announce McCraney, still a student at Yale Drama, as a playwright adept at multiple styles.
"The Brothers Size" wanders toward a vague, unconvincing conclusion, but no scribe debuts with "Hamlet." It's appropriate for Under the Radar to launch a writer like McCraney and place him in proximity to an experienced pro like Daniel MacIvor.
The Obie-winning Canuck could inspire many writers with the accomplishment of "A Beautiful View," which manages to explore bisexuality, tentative love, the power of dying thoughts, and camping safety without tying itself to any of them.
MacIvor offers two nameless women. They speak to us from limbo, debating and reenacting the events of their long, complicated history.
Neither woman can define what the other meant to her, and MacIvor doesn't try either. Instead, he lets exquisitely etched moments -- an awkward kiss, a one-off gig in a ukulele band, a tear-streaked fight -- prove that we can need someone without ever articulating how.
Few writers show this much restraint. MacIvor trusts his audience to feel what cannot be named. On an almost-bare stage, lushly lit and occasionally dotted by props, the unsaid things give the play an allure of mystery. Auds are invited to lean in and listen, letting the collection of tiny memories quietly explain a life.
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