Keep the Light On
Annex Theatre
Through March 8.
Here are three short plays about American exhaustion at the end of
the first decade of the 21st century. The exhaustion is caused by eight
years of unremitting stupidity. The point from which this stupidity has
radiated is the White House. To name the White House as the one source
of the fatigue and anxieties in these plays might seem like a stretch.
None of them directly names President Bush or the two wars or the
current global economic turmoil as the cause of anything. In fact, we
have no idea what catastrophe caused the actors in this performance to
retreat to a fantastic place that’s “off the grid” and receives all of
its power from human energy—the electricity in the theater is
produced by actors on bicycle generators. But it’s not a matter of
content (naming the catastrophe); it is a matter of feeling. This is
how we look, act, and feel after eight years of stupidity radiating
from the White House: exhausted.
Two of the three plays, 1001 and Foxy Populi, are
comic; one, ElectriCity, is serious and dark. 1001,
by Scot Augustson, is a verbal flash fire that consumes itself, its
humor, its story, and leaves you wondering. The next play, Foxy
Populi, by Elizabeth Heffron, is more physical than verbal and has
as its mission the mockery of popular culture in the age of George W.
Bush. ElectriCity, by Bret Fetzer and Juliet Waller Pruzan,
takes us for a short ride through the ruins of the American family.
None of the plays, directed by Ellie McKay, are disappointing, and the
experience of watching all of them leaves you in a state of mind that
those in the days of the Weimar Republic must have been in when they
left their nightclubs and cabarets. Let’s hope, however, that the way
the Bush period ends this year is not the same as the way the Weimar
Republic ended in 1933. CHARLES MUDEDE
100 Heartbreaks
CHAC Lower Level
Through March 1.
Country music is the music of poor white people, and like just about
everything else, it lost all its dignity in the 1990s. There used to be
a kind of bootstrap pride to the genre: I may be in pain, the
songs declared, but this pain is all mine and nobody can take that
away from me. 100 Heartbreaks, a new one-woman show, is a
pleasant callback to that time, before country became the theme music
of an empire built on willful ignorance.
Joanna Horowitz plays Charlane Tucker, an aspiring country star from
Kentucky touring skeezy bars across post–Toby Keith America.
Tucker is the kind of performer who’s so eager to entertain that her
enthusiasm is the main attraction. She belts out an awkward medley of
classics—”Walkin’ After Midnight,” “I Walk the Line,” “Walkin’
the Floor Over You”—and cracks bad, local-color stage patter to
make the audience feel special. She even brings her own giant American
flag as a backdrop.
Over the course of the show, we learn that Tucker is trying to have
her heart broken 100 times by 100 different men, in an effort to become
an authentic, pained country singer. After all, she explains, “My mama
always said, ‘You ain’t livin’ if you ain’t losin’, and you ain’t
losin’ if you ain’t lovin’.” Of course, somewhere before heartbreak
number 50, Tucker has authentically fallen in love with a man and
doesn’t know what to do: Who ever heard of a happy country singer?
Horowitz wrote the play and many of the songs, and there’s some
really strong music here, particularly “One Man Closer to Nashville”
and “One More Heartbreak for the Road.” She’s got a good voice for the
brassy 1970s Loretta-and-Dolly-style country, and she can muster up a
satisfying yodel, too. Tucker is sympathetic and charming.
Clocking in at just about an hour, though, the show does feel a
little slight. Horowitz successfully addresses the authenticity themes,
but the play’s conflict is introduced and then resolved almost
immediately, and a little more characterization in the last
half—maybe as little as a few covers of some Hank Williams
songs—would do wonders. Still, for those who love country, this
is a pretty great cabaret that treats the genre lovingly, and with a
surprising amount of pride. PAUL CONSTANT
By the Waters of Babylon
Seattle Repertory Theatre
Through March 2.
If I had known that Suzanne Bouchard was in this two-person Cuban
history lesson cum
domestic-violence melodrama, I would have
recused myself. Her whole persona—the naturally low voice with
its occasional flourish of put-on vibrato, the bourgeois air that
settles around her shoulders like a pashmina—gives me hives. But
I failed to recuse myself, and to be fair, this performance is not her
worst. She races through her lines to pounce on the lame quips that
Seattle playwright Robert Schenkkan has deposited at the ends, but
overall this vaguely witchy Austin seductress, who has hired a Cuban
gardener as much for his companionship as for his landscaping
abilities, suits her skills. Mexican-American Armando Durán, who
plays the gardener, is a very poor ambassador of Cuban dance, but
otherwise, he’s properly bewildered and aroused by his desperate,
drunken employer.
The real problem with By the Waters of Babylon isn’t the
cast; it’s the play. The press notes include this revealingly defensive
argument: “It’s true that writers tend to write what they know. But
Schenkkan isn’t a typical writer.” Whatever. By the Waters of
Babylon is exactly the palaver you’d expect from a liberal
Seattleite telling liberal audiences in the Pacific Northwest that Cuba
is neither a paradise nor a prison. Actual line spoken by Bouchard:
“Now that we’ve established that I’m a horticulturally impaired bigot
masquerading as an enlightened liberal….” Also: “What’s a
mojito?” Every Spanish line is awkwardly translated into
English by the other actor—even in the throes of passion. The
emotional peaks and valleys of the story feel abrupt and exaggerated.
And the faux magical-realist ending is just painful. Authenticity may
be overrated, but good writing isn’t. ANNIE WAGNER
