Review: MR. BURNS, A POST-ELECTRIC PLAY at Contemporary Theater Company

Playwright Anne Washburn asks an intriguing question: what happens to pop culture after the fall of civilization? Taking an episode of The Simpsons as her starting point, Washburn tackles that question in Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play. And the production at the Contemporary Theater Company (CTC) brings Washburn's work to brilliant life with outstanding performances, clever staging, and delightfully integrated music.

Mr. Burns unfolds in three acts: the "today" world seven months after a cataclysmic event, seven years later, and finally 75 years into a future where stories from television (and even today's prosaic amenities, like hot cocoa) have acquired the status of epic myth. The first two acts have largely the same cast, a ragtag group of survivors who begin to come together while trying to remember the "Cape Feare" episode of the Simpsons. Seven years later, they have formed a theatrical troupe performing TV shows by torchlight in a world without electricity. By the third act, we have moved into a future where Simpsons episodes are performed with a flavor of both religious ritual and commedia dell'arte. It is a profound exploration of oral culture, myth-making, and the ancient roots of theater itself.

It's a deliciously dark comedy shot through with heartstoppingly poignant moments, and director Maggie Cady's vision for the show is capacious enough to hold it all. Her decision to use the CTC's outdoor performance patio for the first two acts is inspired. We really feel, sitting amid the crickets and citronella torches, like we could be eavesdropping on the survivors. Moving the third act indoors to the theatre's black box provides just the right notes of low-tech (stars get winched in on a clothesline) theatricality, perfectly appropriate for the clever but resource-challenged world of post-electric 2100.

The cast is uniformly excellent. All are required to double—as survivors in the first two acts, then as actors playing Simpsons characters in the third. The "Cape Feare" episode mutates from being a genial riff on the classic Mitchum/Peck melodrama (with the evil clown Sideshow Bob stalking Bart) into something akin to a passion play. It's a challenge for the cast in the third act to play not the Simpsons characters we are familiar with, but rather the actors in this future world who take up these larger-than-life roles with no memory of their context. And they do an amazing job. Cady has kept acting at the core of the show, and it is stellar.

Christine Green is a standout as the survivor Matt, whose recollections drive much of the first act. She is, by turns funny, nostalgic, and deeply human. It is a particular challenge, as an actor, to appear to be spontaneous when "remembering" something, but Green absolutely nails it (as does everyone else; Cady has coached them well). Corey Martin also has powerful moments, most notably in his monologue retelling the story of another survivor's plan to try restarting one of the derelict nuclear reactors. It's a devastating tale, delivered with just the right notes of terror and sad acquiescence. Owen Gilmartin offers a powerful turn as an outsider who has been traveling the blighted landscape ("Providence was deserted, weirdly, not even a lot of bodies...") which sets up one of the show's most poignant moments, as everyone hauls out their notebooks to recite the names of the missing. For anyone who recalls the handbills papered all over New York after 9/11, it's a gut punch, and Cady has given the scene both intense focus and room to breathe.

The second act offers Rosa Nguyen an opportunity to shine as an "actor" in one of the "commercials" the group performs alongside the episode. Sami Avigdor, who plays a reticent survivor in the first act, blossoms into the director of the troupe in a finely crafted shift. Kenney Knisely is wonderful as the prop master for the troupe, smashing a bathroom mirror to bolster the candlelight in their "television set." The piece they're working on, the Simpsons car trip to their FBI-provided secret hideaway on Terror River, is a delight.

Once we've moved to the far future, things get big and weird—and musical, with Michael Friedman's score complementing Washburn's lyrics. Rachel Hanauer, the music director, has coached excellent vocal performances and gets a big, satisfying, and appropriate sound out of just a keyboard, drum, and a handful of tubular chimes (Owen Gilmartin later joins in on acoustic guitar). Sophia Pearson shines as "Bart" and Sami Avigdor as "Mr. Burns" in two delightful performances perfectly calibrated to the macabre mythos that has developed around the dim memories of the show. Reed Reed provides a charming "Scratchy" complementing Green's "Itchy," as Burns' hench-critters.

The scenic design, by Rebecca Magnotta, is understated and realistic for the first two acts (mostly accomplished with small set pieces) then vaults into a weird futuristic space of primary colors and large flat surfaces that works well to accentuate the alien-ness of the future. The costumes, by Marissa Dufault, are similarly functional, with characters in slightly worn everyday clothes outside, then shapeless black outfits when the cast take on their ceremonial roles.

It's not a perfect production. Washburn's script calls for the third act to be done using strong makeup reminiscent of "the gaslight melodramas of the Victorian era." It's a legitimate directorial choice to ignore that, but it does make it somewhat harder for the audience to disconnect the actors (who have become familiar over the first two acts) from their appearance as completely different players 75 years in the future. But that's a quibble.

This is a tight, expertly staged production with powerful performances that center the human experience of catastrophe. It's a play that will get you thinking—and wondering about the future. Highly recommended. It is, in a word, excellent.

Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, by Anne Washburn, directed by Maggie Cady, at the Contemporary Theater Company, 327 Main St, Wakefield, Sept. 15-16, 21-23, 28-30 at 7pm. Tickets $30 (flexible pricing available) at the box office (401) 218-0282 or online at the link below.  Content advisory: guns and gunshots.

Photo credit: Seth Jacobson Photography

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