PlayFest’s seventh season has concluded. All four new plays speak to the time in which we live. Two stood out as compelling, tightly written and ready for a full production. One dark satire bordered on horror. A cartoonish romp needs a lot of work.
“Drowning,” by Bill Capossere, was billed as a play about grief, but it is so much more. Roger (Erik Liberman), struggles to accept the accidental death of his son, Ryan (manifested by Luca Sandoval McCallum). Neighbor Simon (Matt Bodo) wrestles with guilt over a lapse in attention. His wife, Lynn (Christina Norris), balances complex emotions surrounding the tragedy and her own marital quandary. Using a fluid storytelling structure, Capossere shifts from past to present and navigates the rich fields of memory and regret. Well written and fully realized, the play succeeds as an emotionally moving humanist document filled with of despair, hope and redemption.
“Becky & Her Lung Transplant,” by Lucy Wright and William Missouri Downs, is a tightly written satire on today’s blurry landscape that confuses reality and fantasy. Hollywood screenwriter Sylvia (Jodi Kingsley) navigates the power dynamics of the American entertainment industry with her agent (Jodi Long) while coping with her son Zeke (Conor Sheehan), an addicted gamer who cannot distinguish the war on his screen from reality. In a bizarre contract with Cecilia (Gabriella Cavallero), whose daughter’s medical trauma drives shifting iterations of a possible TV series or movie, Sylvia compromises again and again in this taut satire where every word, every plot twist and revelation matters.
“There Are Monsters,” by Andrea Aptecker, may be a spooky thriller about a stormy night in a southern mansion, but it transcends its genre. From the beginning, privileged Myrna (Julie Eccles) and Theo (Ray Abruzzo) welcome yokel strangers Opal (Molly Carden) and Red (Jacob Dresch) for a tense evening full of awkward revelations. Menace pervades the atmosphere and serves as a metaphor for our time of hypervigilance, political and class divides, and downright fear. Aptecker’s suspenseful drama underscores the class resentment that’s abundant in America today.
“D.Q.M. or Drag Queen Magic,” by Ian August, illuminates a different facet of today’s tumultuous zeitgeist. Nancy (Luisa Frasconi), a powerless and pitiful young woman who can’t get her life together, meets Letta Celebrate (Charlie Levy), a savvy drag queen who combines familiar mentor tropes: Cinderella’s fairy godmother, the Wizard of Oz and, specifically, the guardian angel from the 1946 holiday film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The playwright also borrows the “Groundhog Day” film structure of repeating days to unfurl a victim satire. Structurally, repetition matters, but the play is overwritten and becomes tedious instead of enchanting. During the talkback, playwright August admitted to his excesses. The comedy began as a cartoon sitcom and ended with an odd, unnecessary and preachy sermon on acceptance.
The play clearly needs work, but that’s what PlayFest is all about.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
