Review: BUZZER at ACT Feels Overly Self Important

It's one thing when a play is meaningful and important, something most plays strive for. It's another thing when a play tries to be meaningful and important. And it's yet another thing when a play insists that it's meaningful and important. Unfortunately Tracey Scott Wilson's play "Buzzer", currently playing at ACT, falls squarely into that second camp and teeters to fall into the third.

It's a story about money, race, love, trust, and fear (those aren't my words, they're on the poster) as Jackson (Andrew Lee Creech), a young, successful black man, comes back to his formerly run down neighborhood to find he barely recognizes it. New gentrified restaurants and stores and renovated apartments are springing up. So Jackson buys up one of the apartments partially in an effort to return to his roots but also to get in on the ground floor of an up and coming neighborhood. He invites his white girlfriend Suzy (Chelsea LeValley) to come live with him and just when they're about to set up their happy little life together, Jackson's best friend Don (Spencer Hamp), a white guy fresh out of rehab, shows up needing a place to stay.

If it sounds like I'm dwelling too much on the race of the characters it's only because the play does it first as they spend most of it talking about how successful the black guy is (especially when compared to the other black guys in the neighborhood) and how much of a failure the rich privileged white guy is. It's something we've seen so many times before and done with much more elegance. Wilson borders on beating the audience over the head with it which either demands the audience feel something (as some around me did) or show off that it had no better way to convey that message (as I felt). And to top it all off it's bookended with a stiff and overly self important bit of exposition that sounds like exposition and an ending that at best goes against everything that's happened in the story so far and at worst shoves it right over the edge into the realm of cliché.

Director Anita Montgomery has assembled a cast of fine actors whom I've seen do so much better in other roles. Here they feel out of place and not convincing in the world they claim to inhabit. Plus all of them fall into the trap of making sure everything is so very meaningful that the pace suffers and none of them become very likable. They come across like that guy at a party who insists he's had it so much worse than you and keeps telling you that. And if the three characters in your play aren't likable then why do we care what happens to them?

On the whole the play just keeps screaming "I'M DEEP!" but I prefer my theater to tell me a good story with good dialog that doesn't try to beat me over the head with its message. And by not beating me over the head with the message then you'll probably get that message through. But since Wilson's play failed in that respect I give "Buzzer" a somewhat annoyed NAH with my three letter rating system. I just failed to find anything fresh or meaningful here.

"Buzzer" from AJ Epstein Presents performs at ACT through February 21st. For tickets or information contact the ACT box office at 206-292-7676 or visit them online at www.acttheatre.org.

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