BWW Reviews: RAPTURE OF THE DEEP at Balagan Theatre

Balagan Theatre finishes up their 2010 season as well as their run in their current performing space with the brand new play with music by Eric Lane Barnes, "Rapture of the Deep".  And while their previous shows this season really hit home runs, "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog", "Trout Stanley", and "Greetings From Styx" to name a few, this final show really misses the mark and left me wondering, "What's the point?"

The somewhat autobiographical play focuses on the lives of Wanda, a woman still dealing with the death of her 11 year old preacher brother Jimmy, and Guy, Wanda's son trying to find himself while trying to get out of the shadow of his late Uncle.  Along the road, we do meet the aforementioned Jimmy through flashbacks as well as Guy's best friend Bethany and her Mother Eileen.  Bethany has said that she can exorcise the ghost of Jimmy with her Wiccan ways much to the dismay of her hyper-religious Mother who thinks she can drive away Guy's demons with the help of God.  Now while sometimes autobiographical shows can work, I find most of them fall into the trap that this one did, they end up being someone else's therapy on stage.  There were a few moments of a well formed story and the music was quite nice but mostly the show and dialogue felt forced and like just so much venting for the author.  There was no real plot, just so many overly preaching moments.

But even a not so good show can shine with a good cast.  Unfortunately the performances here are an inconsistent mixture of forced over acting or bland wooden ones.  The only respectable performances I can note were those from Lauren Kottwitz as Bethany and Alyssa Keene as Eileen.  Both managed actually real people amidst a sea of caricatures.  The rest seemed to stumble around, trapped by mediocre dialogue and a script with no sense of where it wanted to go.  But then they could have been just doing the best they could with the script that needs help.  I must say that all of the performers had lovely voices but the songs were not frequent enough or story driving to Make Up For the script itself.  All in all it just seemed like Mr. Barnes' exorcising his own demons and forcing the rest of us to watch.

I have to say, when writers choose to write shows based on their own lives, they need to make sure the rest of us will want to know about them.  In this case, I don't.  Balagan Theatre has put out some wonderful shows this season.  But they should have gone out on the high note that was "Dr. Horrible".  Luckily they still have late nights of that show so technically, they will finish this chapter of their theater's life with the Doctor.

"Rapture of the Deep" plays through September 25^th at Balagan Theatre.  For tickets or information, visit them online at www.balagantheatre.org.

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