In Utah playwright Aden Ross' new work, receiving its premiere by Plan-B Theatre Company, three people find themselves imprisoned for unknown reasons. Locked in a spare cell, talk is the only tool to keep fear at bay. And so they keep talking, around, across and through their political divisions.
Ross' dialogue is an intentionally wordy thicket, preoccupied with such pressing issues as unlawful incarceration, government spying, terrorism and the Iraq war. Under Jerry Rapier's direction, a solid cast shapes people out of political stereotypes.
There's Christy Summerhays' intellectual liberal Kristen, who begins the play with her desperate stumble through the dark. Kristen comes to expose the roots of her anger as she finds, surprisingly, the steely heart beating beneath the piety of Teri Cowan's Rita, a rich Christian housewife who's also the mother of a soldier in Iraq. Both women are provoked by Kirt Bateman's Nick, a corporate climber who becomes increasingly desperate the longer he's without his prescription and black-market drugs.
The threesome's increasing hysteria plays well against a spare set, which creates a claustrophobic mood through patterns of shadowed swastikas and a deliberate background hum. (Kudos to set, lighting and sound designers Randy Rasmussen, Cory Thorell and Cheryl Ann Cluff.)
All of this adds up to much: "Amerika" is a play of our times and about our times.
This play should get notice from Salt Lake's theater community, as well as voters and politicians, anyone who cares about living in a country founded on the high-sounding principles of personal liberty. It's remarkable when a local production reveals such serious ambitions, and it's particularly significant that this play is coming to life here, in the blue-tinged capital city of a very red state, for it reveals the narrative force that political theater can be.
Which brings us to the dramatic problem: What each character reveals over the course of the play doesn't add up to a plausible ending.
Instead, the playwright seems willing to spark a conversation and leave it at that, not answering the questions she's set in motion: Who imprisoned these people? Why are they being held? What will earn their freedom? The audience is left to interpret the material, and on opening night, the collective silence seemed confused, rather than thoughtfully stunned.
Yet that seems a worthy, nonfatal flaw for a play committed to entertaining us by making us think. "Is anybody there?" You'll find "Amerika's" questions resonating in your head for days after the lights go out.
ellenf@sltrib.com
"Amerika"
Where: Studio Theatre of the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City.
When: Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., with 2 and 7 p.m. shows on Sunday, through April 2. Talk-back with playwright Aden Ross at 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Added show: 5:30 p.m. April 2.
Running time: 90 minutes; no intermission.
Tickets: $15 ($10 students); 801-355-ARTS or http://www.planbtheatrecompany.org.
Bottom line: Smart, heady political conversation for our times.
