WMU Theatre recently opened its production of “Utopia.” WMUK’s Gordon Bolar has this review.
Director Joan Herrington states in her program notes that Charles L. Mee’s “Utopia” is a “collage” featuring a different kind of structure than that of a traditional play. The playwright uses, and encourages directorial use of poems, music, and scenes that “pillage,” or borrow from works by past masters such as Euripides, Pablo Neruda, and Vivaldi.
Most importantly, Mee’s play includes dozens of short two-character scenes reflecting love in all its forms and stages. Herrington notes that these scenes and the borrowed materials, provide “windows into the souls” of the 27 characters who inhabit the small café that is the setting for “Utopia.”
In Herrington’s captivating production, the musical structure supporting these windows are the four concerti of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” Included here are four long scenes which seem to be meditations on the fickle nature of newly awakened young love, the unexpected consequences of its blooming, adjustments to its withering or fading, and finally a mature reflection on love’s joy and impermanence.
Because “Utopia” is staged in three quarters thrust on the floor of the York Arena Theatre, the intimate conversations of café patrons, spoken in hushed tones, are overheard by the nearby audience, as well as two characters, a mother and daughter, who observe and eavesdrop on customers at other tables.
The beauty and appeal of this production is that the most heartfelt and otherwise secretive confessions, emotions, disappointment, and aspirations of lovers are made accessible. The fact that these private revelations occur in a public venue, a coffeehouse, was at once empowering, titillating, and illuminating during the opening night performance I attended.
Katie Bavirsha, as Jennifer, launches the evening’s action with an inventory of a young woman’s search for purpose in life. Bavirsha is a versatile actress and gifted comedienne who possesses a formidable array of physical and vocal tools. She easily assimilates the sublime aspirations of her search with the petty details of daily life.
Jacob Tyler Reinstein as Bob, her appropriately silent partner, patiently listens as Bavirsha concludes her character’s survey of purposes with two lofty desires: to “be human” and “find one great love.” When Bob doesn’t blink, she confidently adds to her laundry list two relationship dealbreakers for her daily routine: doing laundry and washing dishes.
After a love-struck Bob agrees to Jennifer’s housework demands it appears that this pair is destined for a happy life together. Not so with most of the other couples presented in “Utopia.”
One attribute that even the unhappy pairs of lovers share with Jennifer and Bob, however, is the need for negotiation, although not always successful, in a relationship. At a center table we see a lesbian couple negotiate what a “life together will be.”
In another part of the room a straight couple negotiates the proper word to describe their relationship, until exhaustion sets in and one walks away from a marriage proposal.
In one of the production’s more revelatory moments a gay man, Fabio (played by August-Aurelius Palmer) negotiates with himself about reasons for his attraction to partner, Barney (Nico Polk.) Palmer struggles with his own fickle nature as he concludes that Barney reminds him of a “high school friend who reminded him of a guy” he once “saw in a movie.”
On the other side of the room a young stranger, Henry (Derrick Jefferson-Mobley) tentatively approaches Olympia (Lataevaya Severe) who sits alone writing at her table. His initial icebreaker is an offer for marriage and a life together.
After Severe’s withering “I don’t know you” look, and pitched icy silence, Jefferson Mobley’s character decides to modify his offer down to a cup of coffee. Here playwright Mee suggests that romantic negotiations can begin as soon as “hello.”
Severe is an actress who can quickly sketch and fully inhabit the interior life of her character with admirable economy of movement, dialogue, and facial expression. She does so in a later scene with Thyona (Brie Bradley) as they list the flaws of the opposite sex.
Harrington’s direction supports the cinematic flow of the production’s numerous scene changes with fluid entrances of characters, and exits that clearly identify each character’s triumph, defeat, or confusion in their quest for love.
One of the show’s more memorable features is the set of carefully constructed transitional elements that mark seasonal changes in character’s lives and relationships. These evocative choregraphed interludes of movement set to Vivaldi elevate the characters and endow even the most petty and desperate of the lot with elegance, dignity, and humanity as members of a universal chorus engaged in the eternal dance of love.
At the play’s conclusion, a benediction is spoken by the mother, Edna (Lexie Strohschein) who has been silently watching from her corner table. With a touch of sadness, she shares with her daughter detailed memories from her own life. These are somehow connected to the parade of misguided couplings, broken dreams, and successful unions that have just passed before us.
Her final words of wisdom refer to the collage presented in “Utopia” and allow both theatregoers and her daughter to take what they will from what they have seen: “You make a life of these.”