In the rural Midwest, a young woman’s heated love affair spawns a chain of unimaginably gruesome events that spell doom and destruction for the small town’s residents. Played at a frantic and frenetic pace, this eighty-five minute whirlwind is sure to enthrall and horrify.
L.A. WEEKLY:
There’s not much happening in the backwater
farm community where Melanie Marnich’s steamy drama unfolds: Folks go to
church, get drunk, tell ghost stories, maybe “fool around.” In this narrow
cultural enclave of rough beer-swilling farmers, pretty, coquettish Laura
(Carrie Wiita) stands out. Married to the carnally brutish and domineering Tin
(Gregory Sims), she’s caught up in a passionate affair with a strapping buck
named Daniel (RJ Debard) — but inexplicably hedges when he implores her to run
away with him. Her life implodes after the local psycho (Kevin Meoak) — who is
hot for her himself — commits a shocking act. Marnich’s spare storytelling
style eschews the background details of these people’s lives; we’re never told
how the lovers met, or why the scrupulous Laura remains married to a man she
so evidently despises. This leaves the performers plenty of leeway to connect
the dots — an opportunity Wiita seizes with delectably captivating skill, but
which other performers unhappily leave undone. This doesn’t include Sims,
whose multilayered performance bares the need beneath his character’s
explosive anger, or JJ Maynes, on target as the neighbor who nervously tries
to clue him in on Laura’s hanky-panky. Under Jaime L. Robledo’s direction, the
show’s uncredited music, Yancey Dunham’s lighting and Ben Rock’s sound design
come together to create a sense of spooky desolation.
--Deborah Klugman
© 2008 L.A. Weekly
L.A. CITYBEAT: Melanie Marnich’s dose of rural Midwestern adultery and its unhappy results was inspired by a 1622 play by Thomas Middleton. So it’s an old story, grimly predictable and surprisingly restrained – with no nudity and scant onstage violence. An eye-catching performance by Carrie Witta helps. Jaime L. Robledo directed, tautly.
--Don Shirley
© 2008 L.A. CityBeat