Review: THE TWELFTH STORY at The Annex Theatre Tells A Few Too Many

"The Twelfth Story" world premiere at The Annex Theatre reminded me of the Rudyard Kipling Just-So Stories that were read to me at bedtime. Directed by Amy Poisson, the cast of "The Twelfth Story" was as jubilant as spritely camp counselors. As a child, I think I would have liked the story's magic, goblins, twinkling lights and fairy tales. Unfortunately, due to an overlong script and lack of depth, my adult self was a bit bored.

Written by Rebecca Goldberg, this play has the audience sit beside the downtrodden Athena, who was demoted to the Anthropology department at her university from Magic Studies in the post-post-apocalypse. The bulk of the play is Athena watching archival footage of an ancient people from the post-apocalypse called the Neo-Agrarians, botanists who live off the vegetables and roots that thrive on story telling.

At the top of the first act, Athena sets the tone for the play with a tremendously long monologue about the history of magic. This would be one of many monologues by the protagonist that were more lecture than soliloquy. This immediate amount of exposition played a bit dryly, especially since we did not have any understanding or connection to the characters yet.

Let me break down the layers of metafiction in this play. "The Twelfth Story" is about a girl watching footage of people who tell folk stories about other people and animals, creating three layers of separation between the audience and the major narrative. The Neo-Agrarians use a lot of physicality and some synchronized interpretive movement to depict these twelve different tales over the course of two and a half hours, and nothing more. It becomes impossible to connect with any of the characters with all of these layers of separation, making any glimmer of conflict between said characters seem odd and misplaced. This created a strange paradox for this play, because when a conflict was called for, it did not belong. Take for instance a love story shoehorned in between two Neo-Agrarians, alluded to twice and then dropped. Additionally, the stories the Neo-Agrarians told, unlike most children's stories, had no moral. This narrative required so much mental energy with little obvious payoff.

Truly the actors did their best. Manuel R. Cawaling went above and beyond as Teller Bug as he incorporated lots of variation in his storytelling with his voice and body language. When Cawaling's Teller Bug was telling the story of a lecherous goblin antagonist, with his hulking silhouette looming behind a drop cloth, it made that folktale the most memorable of the bunch.

On that note, with all of the anthropomorphized animals and plants in the folktales, I would have loved to see the stories shown, rather than told. Yes, Athena was watching documentation of the Neo-Agrarians in their natural environment, but it made what I believe were quite charming and mystical stories forgettable.

This play has really good intentions-it depicted a really unique landscape that had so much promise: "an ancient tribe of botanists with extraordinary methods to make plants grow." That very method was demonstrated twelve different times, leaving no room for character development or a high-stakes plot. The most captivating components were just skimmed over, giving me just enough hope to keep me engaged. For instance, at the top of the play, Dr. Kali Vlassopoulos gave Athena one last chance to stay in the Magic program if she could transfigure a feather into a key. Insert some really lovely special effects, and I was intrigued. But that was the last of the wizardry. She found that the true magic was in her storytelling, which is a beautiful concept, but I do not believe it needed 150 minutes to come to life.

I give The Annex Theatre's "The Twelfth Story" 1.5/5 stars.

"The Twelfth Story" runs through February 20, 2016. For tickets and information, visit www.annextheatre.org

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