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Home > Blogs > Things to do in Butler County > Archives > 2009 > April > 05 > Entry
Humana Festival review: Under Construction
In the beginning, the narrator tells us which scenes the ensemble is going to perform, rattling off a list of numbers as if they mean anything, explaining that this is the set of scenes this particular group chose to present and that future productions of “Under Construction” will be totally different because, like America, this play is always, well, under construction.
The next hour and a half is consumed with bits of poetry, monologue, story, song, dance, movement and real construction. A man is wrapped in duct tape. Another spends a good portion of the show naked and rolled up in a large sheet of paint-splattered plastic. A woman takes a microphone into the audience to ask people pointed questions about their sex lives. A salesman reads the back covers of pulp romance novels.
“Under Construction” is not the most inscrutable of Charles Mee’s plays, but is certainly one of the most improvisational and free-style.an
The one thing the various scenes have in common, it seems, is the sense of intention, of trying to explain the unexplainable, of the stage trying on different landscapes to see what works and what doesn’t.
There are moments of poignancy (“I wish I knew more people here,” a woman writes in her blog. “I feel like a nobody in a sea of nobodies”), and moments of discomfort and embarrassment (a couple of people left in the middle and others expressed their bafflement at the end), and moments of sheer silliness, but succeeds in expressing a curious world view and an acceptance of the constantly changing nature of culture.
Official site: The Humana Festival of New American Plays
Review of “ Ameriville”
Review of “ Slasher”
Review of “Brink!”
Review of “Wild Blessings”
Review of “The Hard Weather Boating Party”
Review of the Ten Minute Plays
Review of “Absalom”
Photos by Harlan Taylor
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