Nice Life

Review of The Quonsets, Yale Cabaret

Often called “the heartland,” and also said to consist of “fly-over states,” the Midwest of the U.S. has been “red”—or Republican—in presidential elections since 1968. But what is life like there? In The Quonsets, comprised of two joined plays, first-year Yale School of Drama playwrights Majkin Holmquist and Alex Lubischer take us to their home states of Kansas and Nebraska, respectively. The title comes from the setting: temporary structures, used as sheds and shelters, in the farming communities of the Midwest. Inside the Quonsets, two one-acts take place as dramas among three different persons, with the fourth character in each provided by the same Custom Cutter (Rachel Kenney), a nomadic worker who provides special services to farms.

The Custom Cutter (Rachel Kenney)

The Custom Cutter introduces the action and provides comments between the acts. Her story is she had a partner who was an artist, and lived for a time in Chicago, but chose to go back to her birthplace. She lays out the basic situation: she wants to farm but has no birthright claim to land. So she becomes a migrant worker, taking jobs where they can be found, as a kind of freelance farmhand. Kenney’s accent and manner take us into the CC’s world, and her playful designation of natural occurrences—cows in a field, for instance—as “installations” lets us know she has a certain irony toward both worlds: the plain folks of the farms and the sophisticates of the city.

In the first play, in Kansas, two hard-working siblings, Cassidy (Stella Baker) and Clay (Gian-Paul Bergeron) take a break from a 27-day stint of fieldwork due to rain. Sheltering in a Quonset, where the CC is trying to get some shuteye, the two banter about a visitor Cassidy is expecting. A rising sophomore at KU, she’s expecting a fellow student—“he’s not my boyfriend!”—to come calling. When Sylvester (Ben Anderson) does arrive, he’s clad in threads just a notch below a rhinestone cowboy. This, along with his name and his general condescending cluelessness about farm-life, immediately earns Clay’s mockery. Most of the play is simply the one-upmanship between Clay and Sylvester—or “Sly,” as the CC immediately dubs him—while Cassidy is placed in the unhappy position of trying to placate both.

Cassidy (Stella Baker), Sylvester (Ben Anderson)

The main point of the play seems to be making the “fish out of water” position apply to someone who considers himself more educated and sophisticated then his grudging host, Clay, who bristles at Sylvester’s ingratiating manner. What Cassidy experiences—in a nicely subtle performance by Baker—is the disjunction between life in college and life down on the farm. How she will resolve the two isn’t clear but only the CC—a much older character—takes pity on hapless Sylvester.

In the second play, Baker transforms herself into Barb, a mom and wife concerned that the business her husband, Dale (Bergeron), is running with his business partner/brother, John (Anderson), has been putting unfair financial burdens on the couple. A recent drought and its effect on the crop and their earnings has put them in a vulnerable position, which John solved by selling their combine. Which means hiring the CC, who is present again, waiting to get paid while the brothers and Barb try to sort things out.

Dale (Gian-Paul Bergeron), John (Ben Anderson)

The undercurrents in the family dynamic, as they slowly surface, are handled well, particularly when we learn of Barb’s fears about a recent violent act of her son. The tensions, mostly resolved by a heart-to-heart, show the strain of business on family, underscored by the difficult arrangements of living year to year.

Director Aneesha Kudtarkar keeps the pace steady in these conversational plays where interactions can veer from casual to tense in a heartbeat. The actors manifest, in the first play, the awkwardness of the outsider trying to break the ice not very successfully, and, in the second, the awkwardness of a family dynamic where Dale has to negotiate a certain gray area between the expectations of business partner and life partner. It’s a tough row to hoe.

As a peek into a rural world and farming as a difficult way of life, The Quonsets sticks to the basics of real lives. The Custom Cutter’s monologue in which she sees Barb as reminiscent of a figure in a painting at Chicago’s Art Institute hints at the poetry of the everyday, even as Barb’s musing reflection on her place in the humdrum scheme of things yearns for access to something else. Morals may hang in the air, but, in these parts, they are neither grim nor comforting. That’s just the way it is.

The Quonsets
By Majkin Holmquist, Alex Lubischer
Directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar

Production dramaturg: Molly FitzMaurice; Set Designer: Sarah Nietfeld; Costume Designer: Beatrice Vena; Lighting Designer: Samuel Chan: Sound Designer: Megumi Katayama; Associate Sound Designer: Andrew Rovner; Technical Director: Jenna Heo; Stage Manager: Alex Cadena; Producer: Armando Huipe

Cast: Ben Anderson, Stella Baker, Gian-Paul Bergeron, Rachel Kenney

Yale Cabaret
February 23-25, 2017

Matters of Life and Death

Review of Styx Songs, Yale Cabaret

Most likely, you’re probably not too fond of death. But then, what does death think of you?

As played by Jeremy O. Harris, Charon, the ferrymen at the River Styx in Hades, is mostly bored with having to rule over a world of fools who, loving life, find themselves dead. His is a world of, at times, poetic justice, and at times of expressive detachment. In any case, he’s a fascinating and theatrical host.

Charon (Jeremy O. Harris) (photo: Elli Green)

Directed by Lucie Dawkins and written by Majkin Holmquist and Tori Sampson—with quotations and adaptations from a range of other writers, including Ovid, T.S. Eliot, and the Persian poet Ferdowsi—Styx Songs keeps our attention focused on the interplay of life and death. Charon, who speaks in a poetic language, wry and rhythmic, treats his visitors as exhibits in a display of how unpredictable and unforgiving death can be. Stories of ill-fated lives—from myth, folktales, Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, and other sources—are mostly narrated in the first person by a host of actors in a variety of roles. It can all be a bit hard to keep track off, as newcomer after newcomer tries to interest us in tales that, to each, meant life and death but that, to us prosaic lifers, can begin to sound like lots of tough luck.

And that may be the point. The many voices of the dead here mostly try to get across to us the particulars of their deaths as though there should be some message or meaning for us. But what their various ends show is that death is as individual in its occurrence as it is unanimous in its reach. And yet the dead’s passion to communicate is palpable. And the cast is wonderful at impressing upon us both enforced muteness and, when Charon pulls the coin from now one mouth, now another, the breathless last chance each seizes to make their lives seem real.

Perhaps the best examples come at the beginning and the end. The story of Narcissus and Echo, well-enacted by Josh Goulding and Stella Baker, is, of course, poetic and mythic, but it also has interactive elements, and even, with Charon’s interventions, humor. And at the close, a troupe of women who were slaves are more confrontational with Charon and the powers-that-be. These women did not live free lives and find Charon’s command over their afterlife to be a further affront. Indeed, their strength in union manages even to silence Charon’s asides.

 Charon (Jeremy O. Harris) and members of the cast of Styx Songs (photo: Elli Green)

The show’s vision of the afterlife—or at least its anteroom—is made striking by an impressive set. Murky and funereal, with diaphanous drapes and mood lighting, Ao Li’s set features, as its main scenic device, a fountain or pool such as can be found in some cemeteries. The entry into Charon’s realm is through the pool and the game cast spends a good deal of its time semi-immersed. The water as reflecting surface, sometimes lit with cool light, and as a prop—with splashes and action—makes the set a compelling presence, adding reality to the unreality of death. Sarah Woodham’s costumes—the white linens that drape the dead and the wonderful riot of effects in Charon’s get-up—are individualized elements of the overall display as well. The musical settings of a segment of Eliot’s poetry and of Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”—functioning as prologue and epilogue respectively—provide solemnity; elsewhere the music from composer Sam Suggs is augmented by Gaven Whitehead’s live percussion to create a variety of effects.

Charon (Jeremy O. Harris) and members of the cast of Styx Songs (photo: Elli Green)

Another segment that deserves special mention is the use of interactive animation; as two of the departed souls speak across a plane that acts as a table-top, drawings in light shift about on its surface, while early in the show a pattern of light on Ophelia’s dress adds to the eeriness of the Stygian world, which is rich indeed in artistic design.

If I have a criticism it would be that the show makes use of too much text—the instances of movement and the use of dumbshow create a language of their own that suggests a spirit prevailing beyond the particulars of earthly life. Which might just be a way of saying that if death doesn’t let us transcend the disappointments of life, what good is it?

Styx Songs
Written by Majkin Holmquist and Tori Sampson, including works from T.S. Eliot, Ferdowsi, Ted Hughes, Edgar Lee Masters, Louis MacNeice, Ovid, Rabindranath Tagore, Dylan Thomas
Directed and created by Lucie Dawkins

Composer: Sam Suggs; Choreographer: Shadi Ghaheri; Dramaturg: Charlie O’Malley; Set Designer: Ao Li; Costume Designer: Sarah Woodham; Lighting Designer: Krista Smith; Sound Designer: Michael Costagliola; Animation Designer: Erik Freer and Richard Green; Technical Director: Becca Terpenning; Associate Technical Director: Elena Tilli; Props Master: Michael Scherman; Wardrobe Supervisor: Rachel Gregory; Percussionist: Gavin Whitehead; Stage Manager: Sarah Thompson; Producer: Trent Anderson

Cast: Stella Baker, Baize Buzan, Josh Goulding, Jeremy O. Harris, Kelly Hill, Olivia Klevorn, Alex Lubischer, Christopher Gabriel Nunez, Charlie O’Malley, Anita Norman, Alexis Payne, Jesse Rasmussen, Juliana Simms, Brittany Stollar, Lucas Van Lierop

Yale Cabaret
September 15-17, 2016