Review: A Competitive, Hilarious GAME at Horizon Theatre Company

Aristophanes’ ancient Greek play Lysistrata, premiering in 411 BCE, tells the story of soldiers’ wives during the Peloponnisian war utilizing their guiles and barring husbands from their beds in order to end their countries’ strife.  Horizon Theatre Company’s production of Bekah Brunstetter’s play The Game, opening to the public on July 5th, tells a similar tale - only this time, it’s 2024, the battlefield is a basement, and the warrior wives drink rose and order from Amazon.

Protagonist Alyssa (Jennifer Alice Acker) finds her marriage in turmoil when her recently unemployed husband Homer (Chris Hecke) becomes obsessed with the titular video game, The Game.  She bands together with other abandoned wives to hatch a plan to defeat The Game - not with a controller but with a sexual strike.  With stellar direction by Caroline Jane Davis, a striking turntable set from Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay, and an entirely female design team, the play shows a variety of women, each with individual - yet universal - issues that they hope to solve with a cold bed.

Acker’s Alyssa begins the show with a direct monologue, explaining her marriage as “a treaty where we both agree to be happy.”  Her frank and comedic characterization continues throughout the show, where she is at turns hilarious heroine amongst her peers and shrewd harpy to her husband.  Hecke’s Homer also shows a duality that counters Acker well, occasionally the stereotypical loafing gamer with a foul mouth and fouler hygiene and occasionally an emotional man trying his best to overcome a depressive state with an immersive gaming world.

The other women joining the strike are so well-cast that it was a surprising fact to find they had only been a team for less than four weeks, given how genuine their friendships seem.  From the top of the show where they gather to discuss wine, Greek yogurt dip, and Poshmark to the end where they fight a literal battle of emotions, each character is hilarious, moving, and heartwarming.  Marcie Millard’s Rhonda hilariously steals just about every scene she’s in while Hope Clayborne’s Cleo is silly and sweet with an eleven o’clock change of heart to sink deep into the audience’s.  Shannon Eubanks portrays Myra with impeccable physicality that hides her deeper feelings until just the right moment, and Michelle Pokopac plays the outlier and war photographer Jen in a way that gets audiences to open up to her right when she opens up to her fellow females.

The show is a hilarious fast-paced paean to femininity in all its forms and the cast shows the many ways to be a women in 2024 - even the gritty, unfeminine parts.  Sexuality is of course at the forefront (even going to almost obscene levels, audience beware) but it is not the heart of the play.  Womanhood - being a sister, a wife, a sex object, a mother, a Dolly Parton fan, a clothing reseller, or a lonely widow - is at its sentimental core, and audiences will surely enjoy each moment discovering who these women truly are.

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