Soul Mates

Unbreakable bonds, unbeatable connections, reproduced with permission from EncoreMichigan.com.

At once simple and complex, Magenta Giraffe Theatre Company's "Soul Mates" delivers variations on a theme, with a gentle but insistent twist. This world premiere – the first professional production for emerging local playwright Kirsten Knisely – is an ambitious piece that seeks to blend the freedom of isolated two-person vignettes with the intricacy of meticulously planned links that tell a larger story. Here, backed by a sharply considered concept and the evident accord of a gifted ensemble, director Frannie Shepherd-Bates wisely focuses on the rewarding connections of the play's diverse array of soul mate relationships, allowing the burgeoning web of connectedness to speak for itself.

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White's Lies

When it comes to comedy, one school of thought holds that playing it straight ushers in the biggest laughs. Another makes no apologies for ladling up serving after serving of ham. In an unusual turn, Meadow Brook Theatre’s production of White’s Lies, by Ben Andron, endeavors to split the difference. This duplicitous Michigan premiere finds director Travis W. Walter leveling a steady gaze at the central story of a titillating familial farce, then tumbling outward into increasingly outrageous flights of fancy at the margins.

Attorney Joe White (Ron Williams) has been at the one-night-stand game for so long, his autobiography would be called Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em. Amid his wake of broken hearts, though, the most egregious is that of his mother (Henrietta Hermelin), who makes no bones about wishing Joe had given her grandchildren. When a revelation about Mrs. White’s health ramps up the guilt factor, an opportune reunion with a contemptuous college flame (Sarab Kamoo) and her willful post-collegiate progeny (Katie Hardy) seems like the perfect recipe for a long-lost daughter hoax. What’s one little white lie if it grants a dying woman’s dying wish? It’s not as though sweet old Mrs. White’s health will miraculously resurge and the fib will be cited as her single prevailing reason for…oh. Or that Joe will meanwhile fall for his pretend daughter while they try to keep up the ruse over the protestations of her forbidding mother, who will go to any lengths to stop…well.

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Looking

Dating woes done comic: Even fizzle sizzles, reproduced with permission from EncoreMichigan.com.

Playwright Norm Foster had one specific meaning in mind for the title of his comedy "Looking": the stigmatized, desperation-rank practice of actively seeking a mate. Everybody wants to find love, yet to search for it, ostensibly to force it, paradoxically comes off as repellent. It's therefore no coincidence that Tipping Point Theatre's take on amorous connections sought and stumbled across, helmed by director Kate Peckham, flourishes on the basis of one intangible, organic ingredient that also portends romantic success. Put simply, it's all about the chemistry.

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When the Rain Stops Falling

A man waits to reunite with his son — a simple story, on its face. But even the most straightforward premise is infinitely informed by surrounding events, up to and including information unknown by the parties involved. The immeasurable heft of this interconnectedness forms the backbone of When the Rain Stops Falling, by Andrew Bovell. Now at the Ringwald Theatre, director Jamie Warrow takes this contemplative text and imbues the current production with depth of feeling that draws together scattered tales of dissolution into a cohesive big picture.

A quick triptych of video vignettes (given a distinct silent-movie feel by designer Mikey Brown) gives way to the domicile of Gabriel York (Travis Reiff), a rough-looking Australian man waiting to host his adult son (Bailey Boudreau) after years of estrangement. Reiff captivates through a jumpy, complex preamble of a monologue, attributing as much nervousness to the impending reunion as to the mysterious appearance of the intact fish he’s preparing, which gently emphasizes the future year-2039 setting and attendant preciousness of natural resources we currently take for granted. This initially meager groundwork carefully laid, the rest of the company pitches into a cyclical whirl of scenes, spinning out into exponential context surrounding Gabriel’s ancestry.

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Postcards

“A man is what a man does.” Spoken early and with heady conviction, this would appear to be the thesis statement of Postcards. The power in the platitude comes from its simplicity, but, as examined by playwright Bill Costanza, it’s an assertion that grows intractable with time and context. “A man is what a man did”; “A man is what a man regrets” — how much weight should a deplorable past bear? In the world premiere production at Detroit Repertory Theatre, director Barbara Busby makes unwaveringly clear the wrongness of an appalling chapter of the American past, while at the same time raising intriguing questions about the long-lasting consequences of the unconscionable.

The play begins in the New York City of 1954, in a small apartment where Hattie McLendon (Cassaundra Freeman) and Rachel (Jacquie Floyd) discuss a mutual acquaintance, whose absence from the scene is conspicuously felt. With the halting allusion people use to speak of the unspeakable, the women lay down just enough of a mysterious framework to begin filling in the biographical blanks of white photographer Alvin Moseby (Dax Anderson). The Alvin of ’54 is at the forefront of the jazz scene, obsessively documenting future greats on the rise (a fervor that similarly informs Burr Huntington’s luscious sound design). But to understand the whole story is to follow Alvin back to 1939 Shiloh, Tennessee, to his marriage with Loretta (Kelly Komlen), and to the origin of an unremarkable box labeled “Postcards,” whose devastating contents have followed and haunted him throughout his life.

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