Highly Topical but Highly Disappointing
Harlequin Production, in Olympia, known for excellent theatre productions addressing topical social justice issues just opened This Flat Earth, a disappointing play by Lindsey Ferrentino, directed by the Artistic Director Aaron Lamb. Although the publicity stated that the play was about the aftermath of a mass shooting in a middle school, the play verged off into so many unfocused unresolved different subplots, it was difficult to say what it was ABOUT.
As the play opens, after some mournful cello music, a youngish teenage girl, in bed with stuffed animals, cannot get to sleep and her father comes in to comfort her, and tries to assure her that everything will be fine. In the next scene, the girl Julie is engaged in very innocent courting rituals with a boy, while watching a horror show on a lap-top. After a lengthy exposition, we learn that they are about to return to school after a mass shooting, where some of their acquaintances were randomly shot, while they randomly survived.
Then the plot gets mushy as Lisa, the mother of one of their dead classmates and orchestra mates, comes in to make everybody uncomfortable. Without being in any way thematically linked to the grieving process, the plot takes a twist and introduces some class conflict. A few other extraneous issues are thrown in for good measure so that by the end of the play, it seems more of a “Coming of Age” play and the ending almost trivializes the intense trauma the kids went through.
Also the inaccuracies about school shootings were glaring, illogical and undermined the credibility of the basic premise. Supposedly, in the play, the kids were going back to the same school and the teachers were going to make it look exactly the same; but generally school buildings are razed to the ground after a shooting. Uvalde was and so was Sandy Hook. Another aspect of the play I did not believe, was that the young teenager, Julie, was not previously aware that there had ever been other school shootings, she thought her school’sshooting was the first.
When she does find out, she questions her father about why the “grown-ups” had not prevented subsequent school shootings. Perhaps the playwright could have used activism arising after the Parkland shooting as a focus and subject for a coherently written play, but she did not. Instead the playwright just led us down several different paths.
Although Enrique Bravo, put in a good solid performance as Dan, the father of Julie, the performances of the young actors, both about 13 years old, suffered because of very bad diction. Especially in the first half hour, their diction was splashy and mumbly, so that about 50% of their lines were inaudible. Along with a fight-intimacy director, costumer and sound engineer, surely the director should have noticed and hired a voice/speech teacher for such young actors. Also, allowing not one but two actors on stage with bangs obscuring their eyes and faces was an oversight by the director, which impeded the ability of the boy and Jenny Vaughn Hall as Lisa to actually express themselves.
For me, it was extremely disappointing since I gladly drive all the way down from Seattle to see the generally brilliant Harlequin’s shows. Everybody in the US is to a greater or lesser degree traumatized by the mass shootings; as they continue they get one or two degrees closer to each of us. Since I woke up on July 4th of this year, to discover that there had been a shooting in my hometown, I started seriously thinking of moving abroad. This Flat Earth did not offer any solace, enlightenment, nor did it mobilize people to stop the violence. Someone needs to write a better play on this very pressing subject.
This Flat Earth. Harlequin Productions. 202 -4th Ave E, Olympia, WA 98501, Thru September 17. Thu Sept. 17 with evening and matinée performances on both Sat and Sun. For Tickets and information see:
https://harlequinproductions.org/show/this-flat-earth-2/