By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Tim Fuller
From left, Bryn Booth, Holly Griffith, Kathryn Kellner Brown, Ryan Parker Knox and Hunter Hnat (in the space suit).
No one is better than the Rogue Theatre when it comes to presenting shows that make you laugh and think...all at the same time.
"Middletown” by Will Eno is the company's latest triumph in this category, the perfect play for a desert summer night when monsoon pressures are building outside in the dark.
The plot is more about expressing a philosophy than telling a story. Eno enjoys toying with the idea of how we in the audience know that the people onstage are actors. But it is lots more fun if we pretend the actors are real people doing real things.
Just like we do in our own lives, where all events are extra-ordinary but some events keep recurring so often they become ordinary.
For example, we meet a sad-faced doctor (David Greenwood) who has become so weary over the years helping women through the wondrous miracle of childbirth, this wondrous miracle has become his ordinary routine.
Meanwhile just down the hospital hall is a depressed handyman kind of guy (Ryan Parker Knox) who doesn't feel like his life has amounted to much. He's afraid to express his true feelings about almost everything. But he does know how to clear the clogged drain pipe that is ruining your day.
There are many such comparisons in “Middletown.” Eno isn't interested in weighing out the merits of these viewpoints. That's up to each person in the audience,
But Eno definitely wants to remind us these inequalities are found everywhere, all while continuing to layer on the most droll and delightful humor to describe daily small town life in homey tones somehow reminiscent of Garrison Keillor's “Prairie Home Companion” radio show.
Some reviewers have compared “Middletown” to Thornton Wilder's “Our Town,” but there is little to compare. Wilder sees his town of Grover's Corners as a microcosm of life itself.
Eno sees each detail not as a microcosm of the whole world, but as a new world unto itself. We don't appreciate the exceptional nature of the ordinary, he insists..
Consider the basic human body, all the bones and arteries and organs that must stay in perfect working order every second just so a person can sit still. Whether or not that person is happy or sad doesn't really matter to the body.
Equally masterful is how the director, Christopher Johnson, keeps all of Eno's abstract stage bits swirling and darting in the same direction at all times to create a delightful collection of eccentric characters in the first act who gather momentum in the second act to bring a resolution as heart-breaking as it is heroic.
Creating this symphonic ensemble effect are Bryn Booth, David Greenwood, Holly Griffith, Hunter Hnat, Kathryn Kellner Brown, Ryan Parker Knox, Aaron Shand and Leah Taylor.
"Middletown” runs through July 21 with performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays, at The Rogue Theatre, 300 E. University Blvd. All tickets are $38; student rush $15, on sale 15 minutes before curtain. For further details and reservations, 520-551-2053, or visit TheRogueTheatre.org
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