Review: Wilbury Group Starts the Season With Exciting UI [OO-EY]

There is a current trend in Hollywood to combine movies in a way that creates a "cinematic universe." This allows studios to create a number of movies that are all connected and can be tied together, usually because of a shared world of characters, think Marvel superheroes or the famous Universal Studios movie monsters. In an ingenious sort of experiment, Wilbury Group is kicking off its season with a production that creates a kind of "theatrical universe," by linking together three plays that would otherwise be thought of us very different and entirely separate. With masterful execution, Wilbury Group manages to create a fascinating and frightening world in which we can really believe these three disparate works might coexists.

Wilbury's production, titled Ui [oo-ey], is the brainchild of Artistic Director Josh Short and a collection of his fellow artists, who developed the work in a July 2016 workshop. The three plays being adapted and combined are The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht and Party Time & The New World Order by Harold Pinter. Brecht's play concerns, as you might guess, the rise of Arturo Ui, a lowlife gangster who attempts to rise to power so that he may control the local grocers and their supplies of produce. The play, in Brecht's usual Epic style, is a biting political satire of the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany, and is here distilled down to about forty-five minutes of its original length.

The two Pinter plays are much shorter in their original forms and are presented much closer to their original length. Party Time is another razor sharp commentary, this time on the sheltered upper-class, living their perfect, unblemished lives filled with exclusive clubs, expensive boats, and games of golf and tennis, while chaos and disorder overflow in the streets below the location of their upscale party. While they prattle on, oblivious or in denial or worse, the uprising in the streets is somehow quietly put down. The even shorter The New World Order features only three characters, one of whom is bound and blindfolded. The other two discuss the terrible things they are about to do to their mysterious captive, who they claim is a threat to their democracy.

Attempting to take all of that and make it somehow work together and make sense as a whole is a tough task, but Wilbury Group succeeds brilliantly. It's a lot of fun and more than a little nuts, but it is entertaining and surprising from beginning to end. Make no mistake, it's also a production that will demand your attention. An audience member nearby who had spent most of the time talking to a friend commented after the show was over, "I thought it was supposed to be three plays." That is not an indictment of the production or its possible failure, it's a comment on the fact that you should not only see this play, but pay attention to what it's trying to tell us, because it's pretty important.

Especially impressive are the ways in which Short, who directed and is also featured in the ensemble, manages, along with his talented collaborators, to allow the three plays to exist on their own, while also working together. Characters never cross over into one of the other plays, but scenes do happen simultaneously and its played to great effect. You can easily picture the events of Arturo Ui happening down in the streets as the scene from Party Time occurs in some penthouse apartment high above. And when the captive man in the chair appears during The New World Order, you can't help but wonder who from the other two plays it might be in the chair. The fact that the audience gets to fill in some of those blanks and connect the dots in their own way is part of the fun of this production.

Inhabiting this frightening world is a who's-who of some of our most talented local actors and actresses. One-man supernova David Tessier is perfect as Arturo Ui. As challenging as it might be, he actually shares the stage with a group of actors who match him in energy, charisma and presence. Phoenyx Williams, Daraja Hinds, Sarah Leach and Diego Guevarra make up the rest of the cast of the Arturo Ui portion of the evening and each one is brilliant. Guevarra, who makes his Wilbury debut here, is a revelation and an actor to keep an eye on. Tom Grace also lends a more than capable hand on percussion and occasionally as a member of the ensemble.

During the Party Time segments, another excellent group of actors work together perfectly. Andrew Stigler is wonderfully smarmy and menacing. Julia Bartoletti is the perfect "good wife" always standing by her man. Rachel Dulude brings her usual wonderful snarkiness, razor-sharp wit and icy stare to her role. Vince Petronio is a model of sinister pretentiousness. Joining them are Melissa Penick, Katrina Pavao, Ben Conant and Josh Short, all of whom are great. Guevarra and Stigler return for the brief New World Order section, which wraps things up very nicely.

What should also not be left out is the important fact that the imagined theatrical world created here is more than a little similar to our own. Too similar, really, especially in the current political climate. And Wilbury Group does not shy away from pointing out these similarities and forcing the audience to face and confront them. Are the wealthy "one-percenters" living in their ivory towers without a care in the world while the rest of the world goes to hell in a handbasket? Is the moment just right for a very scary kind of leader to rise to power and lead us all down a very dark path? See this show and then answer those questions for yourself.

Ui [oo-ey] runs through Saturday, October 1st at The Wilbury Group Theatre, located at 393 Broad Street in Providence. Show times are at 7:30pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $15 to $25 and may be purchased at the company's website, www.thewilburygroup.org or by calling 401-400-7100.

Pictured: David Tessier and Daraja Hinds. Photo by James Lastowski.

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