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Peer Reviews Great Falls Reviewed by Keith Waits Entire contents copyright © 2008, Keith Waits. All rights reserved.
To sit in a dark theatre waiting for a new play to begin, a play that has never been produced before, uncertain as to what is about to unfold on the stage before you, is an exciting experience. Too many cultural experiences today are previewed and marketed so aggressively that the audience is often robbed of that excitement. Fortunately, the 32nd Humana Festival of New American Plays is here to help us once again rediscover that anticipation with several new works. To open the festival, the prolific Lee Blessing has returned to the Actors Theatre stage with a new piece of material called Great Falls. Mr. Blessing is not fond of overpopulating the stage with characters, and here we are introduced to only two: a middle-aged man and a teenage girl, who have embarked on a lengthy road trip across the American West under sketchy circumstances. They have a history and a familial relationship that is best discovered in the viewing, but their interactions are rendered with assurance as they move with caustic humor through revelations of secrets from their past and new secrets that are created on the journey. The story contains enough pain and healing to build a real and satisfying drama, and not a moment is wasted in an economical but carefully observed one-act structure.
Actors Tom Nelis and Halley Wegryn Gross do fine work here. They prove adept at creating an intimate yet fragile connection, while never violating the distance that seems built into the staging. At first, the Bingham stage seems too large for the two-character drama, but it eventually becomes clear that the director, Lucie Tiberghien, is using the openness of the space to communicate the gulf, only tenuously bridged, that exists between these two people. In one particularly striking image, designer Paul Owen fills the space with two "taxidermisized" animals encased in glass displays that only emphasize the insulated existence these people have been leading. A fine play done justice by a smart director and two excellent performances, overall, Great Falls is an insightful and well-crafted beginning to this year's festival.
Great Falls Posted Feb. 28, 2008
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