Sometimes when I am sitting in my seat, waiting to take in a
new play at the Hyde Park Theatre, I sort of steel myself. Not at all in a
wincing-at-the-prospect kind of way. More like a fasten-your-seatbelts kind of
way. Because as anyone who regularly attends plays there knows, HPT Artistic
Director Ken Webster is mighty fond of taking the audience on dark and bumpy
rides, adventures steeped in rich language and terrifying turns. For example—The Pillowman, A Behanding in Spokane, and
St. Nicholas.
More recently, Webster’s been letting a little more light
in, thanks in large part to the production over the past couple of years of a
trio of plays by Annie Baker, a young and tremendously gifted playwright whose
work has been performed internationally to much-deserved critical acclaim. I’m
so grateful to Hyde Park Theatre for putting Baker on my radar. When I saw the
first production of her work there, Body
Awareness, I was bowled over, smitten, and so hungry for more I saw it a
second time. Next came Circle Mirror
Transformation, which, as with Body
Awareness, prompts much laughter, some of it the nervous variety.
And now we have Baker's The
Aliens, which opened last week. I’m seeing a pattern here—not just in
Webster’s love of Baker, but my own. It’s easy enough to see how the play suits
Webster’s taste—certainly there’s a darkness here, too. But a weird sort of
light overshadows the darkness, an oxymoronic reverse shadow.
On the surface, we have three characters—two dudes who could
be fairly labeled losers, and a third, younger man (not quite a man, actually)
who shifts from being outraged and frustrated by their antics to fascinated,
hypnotized and, it seems, oddly inspired to follow in their footsteps.
Let’s talk about the acting—Jude Hickey as KJ and Joey Hood as
Jasper play the older two, a pair with a long friendship that seems glued
together by much daydreaming and little in the way of measurable success. The
entire play takes place in an alley behind the Green Sheep Coffee Shop—a truly
stunning set created by Ia Ensterä-- where KJ and Jasper wax faux-philosophical about what was and
what one day might be, while never really going anywhere. Hickey and Hood are two of Austin’s mightiest stage
talents, and The Aliens lends further proof to this truth. They have a natural,
easy chemistry that makes their characters’ friendship utterly believable, and
watching them perform is a true joy.
New to the Hyde Park stage is Jon Cook, in the role of Evan,
the Green Sheep employee who at first tries to shoo KJ and Jasper away, only to
find himself eventually pulled into their drama. Really, this play could just
as easily been called Circle Mirror
Transformation, too, as the end loops back to the beginning, and Evan
begins to ape his elders in the apparent hope of turning himself into one of
them. Cook, a UT senior, does a truly amazing turn here—his face is so
expressive, at turns so naïve, open, curious, confused, joyful and torn, as he
totally nails the sort of real life coming of age characters that haunt coffee
shops everywhere.
As a writer/reader/English major I have the sometimes
annoying habit, when taking in a book/play/movie of automatically rooting
around a work, as I am experiencing it, trying to pluck out meaning and
metaphor on the spot. I know, I know, there are worse habits. But allow me an
analogy here—sometimes, when you go hear live music, rather than single out the
work of the amazing bassist or gifted guitarist, it’s far better to just let
yourself be engulfed by the whole of the music. A great band will do that for
you, override any hard work your brain is doing to separate out the parts. So
it is with The Aliens. I wanted,
initially, to carefully dismantle it in my mind, try to figure out where Baker
was going, what meaning she hoped for me to extract. But then, pretty much
against my will and driven by the outstanding performances of the actors under
the direction of Webster, I just settled back and let the story have me.
That was the right choice. Now, if I wish, I can sit here
and play with the thing all I want, assign meaning—History repeats. Life strives to suck us into the muck. There is light
in the darkness, darkness in the light.—that sort of thing. But I prefer to
just keep it whole in my mind as I sit, days later, the portraits of KJ and
Jasper and Evan still burned vivid in my mind.
The Aliens plays at Hyde Park Theatre Thursdays-Saturdays through April 21, 2012. For more info and tickets go here.
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