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Regional Reviews: St. Louis 12th Annual LaBute New Theater Festival Also see Richard's review of Progress
Or maybe this year's anthology is like a poetic version of channel-surfing, where each new story makes some kind of sense in a way the characters on stage didn't intend at all, in light of each play's adjacencies. In any case, it's all magnificent in a way I can only struggle to describe, thanks to directors Eric Dean White and Wendy Renée Greenwood. But when you smash them all together, storytelling itself becomes a strange new interface, as the foundations of our awareness are pounded down to a pleasant little mush before the next one gets started. Get used to it, I say, because the whole world will seem like this in five or ten years, when artificial intelligence has dazzled us into a mad yearning desire and whole new sets of outrageous misunderstandings–thanks to the chips in our heads and the wings on our feet. The nearly three hour montage seems perfectly harmless at first. It all begins with Erin Fitzgerald's light comedy Junk Drawer, a Muppet-like fantasy set in that extra little pull-out compartment amongst your kitchen cabinets, and charmingly directed by Mr. White. Lighthearted puns and the hopeless quest for meaning, with a lovingly absurd little half-time speech from actor Anthony Wininger, lend a simple-minded dignity to the everyday items we can't quite throw away. The emblematic headgear on the actors's heads are by the redoubtable costumer Amanda Brasher. And the performers take to the stage with a hapless enthusiasm and the kind of faith that seems hardwired into all of us, in a cast that also includes Jade Cash, Tyler Crandall, and Xander Huber. You may yearn for this kind of simplicity after everything else that comes next. That first goofy play comes right before the hypothetical oxygen tank in your metaphorical lunar module explodes, and you realize that you'll be lucky to get back to Earth with your life. The next piece, Go Fish by Cameron Michles, hits a wildly different set of dramatic notes, with Nick Barrows as a tormented young man and Caitlin Mickey as a woman who's done something terrible. A young person could learn a lot from all this jarring variety, though this particular story may edge toward being PG-13. Ms. Greenwood directs the epic little drama and gives us stunning flashes of exogenous dream-snippets that resonate strangely along the playwright's path. And it's those little pantomimes that remind us of the greatest achievements of modern theatre: the non-linear moments that become their own wild visual poetry, thanks in part to the lighting of Patrick Huber. In Go Fish, Whittaker (Mr. Barrows) tries to confront Chloe (Ms. Mickey) in a rattling sort of way that neither of them can entirely make sense of. Under the direction of Ms. Greenwood, the play's psychological textures have their own tiny bits of even more granular texture unfolding deep down inside of them. Again and again you keep thinking "this one-act is too long." But then you find yourself feeling so grateful for each bizarre new twist and wanting Go Fish to keep going on through more of its insurance-cancelling thrashing and crashing. I suspect that all critics must go through this, from every medium, but next I felt a flash of inexplicable dread when I realized the third piece in the program, The Resurrection Men, was set in an Irish graveyard late at night. The gritty, soul-interring tale is devious and horrible and very well put together in a script by Nicholas Dunn. Anthony Wininger really steals the entire two-hour and fifty-minute variety pack with a series of full-bodied performances, but especially here in the rising damp. He plays a grave robber with a reluctant young assistant (the perpetually astonished Xander Huber). And Jade Cash returns in a very odd moment, giving us a fiery glimpse of where we are in a new era and the new possibilities rising in an otherwise timeless setting. Eric Dean White directs, and you and I should be glad to see this one even as a stand-alone event. So that's the first (nearly) hour and a half! And you might want to bring your own bottle of water for intermission. But that's my only quibble for a few hours in the theater packed with enough grandeur to rival (at least much of) the sixty-six books of the Bible. Perhaps all great plays find their own secret passageways of meaning and monstrosity. And with that in mind, we return for the second half of the bill with a creepy, festive Brunch between Caitlin Mickey (Candice) and Jade Cash (Shasta). It's a clever, comical crime story written by Neil LaBute himself, and directed with stylish grace by Ms. Greenwood. A foppish, modern pair of women transforms a sunny sidewalk cafe into a funny but elusive interrogation, where laughter comes centered on mimosas and murder. Xander Huber gets to show a crystalline sense of pathos (along with comedy) in Little Johnny Knows Things, John Pierson's post-COVID story about a young man trying to overcome the isolating effects of the recent pandemic. And as the "normal" guy, Nick Barrows returns from the very intense Go Fish to reveal both a perfect comic skill and a hyper-accurate sense of timing, sharing the scene with Mr. Huber as a budding young ventriloquist. Finally, we have the familiar story of a gay man confronting his straight brother with his own personal struggles in The Rules, by Domenick Scudera. But it's directed with amazing intensity and realism by Eric Dean White, with bravura performances by both Tyler Crandall as a runner-up from "RuPaul's Drag Race" and Anthony Wininger as his irascible Massapequan sibling. In his own intensity of struggling for identity, Mr. Wininger matches Mr. Crandall page for page, as they wend their way to their mother's funeral. Going by the critic's rulebook, I should probably be carrying on and on about Mr. Crandall's intricate, highly credible portrayal of Mario, the gay brother, in a performance that (temporarily) re-writes his entire stage history. But Mr. Wininger, as Leo, plays to equal strengths as the straight brother who must frantically answer back with his own kind of coming out, in a world which he barely understands. The conceit here is that they're driving on an East Coast highway, and thanks to some invisibly great direction by Mr. White, we realize the whole balance of the story has switched around after a case of road rage on Long Island, halfway through. But I can't tell you any more than that, as this, and every story here, has some other side to it that you shouldn't be expecting going in. In nearly every case, some wayward set of footprints is revealed, going far back into the mind. What do you call it when something's like a hall of mirrors, and the strange image smiling back at you is weirdly connected to some previously unknown string of memories deep within your own head? I suppose you call it art! The 12th Annual LaBute New Theater Festival runs through July 26, 2026, at the Gaslight Theater, 360 N. Boyle Ave., St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.gaslighttheater.net. Production Staff: Little Johnny Created By Erin Knadler Junk Drawer Written by Erin Fitzgerald and Directed by Eric Dean White Go Fish Written by Cameron Michles and Directed by Wendy Renée Greenwood The Resurrection Men Written by Nicholas Dunn and Directed by Eric Dean White Brunch Written by Neil LaBute and Directed by Wendy Renée Greenwood Little Johnny Knows Things Written by John Pierson and Directed by Wendy Renée Greenwood The Rules Written by Domenick Scudera and Directed by Eric Dean White * Denotes Member, Actors' Equity Association |
