BWW Reviews: Source Festival's Spacey BLUE STRAGGLER

DC Culture's Source Festival likely gets its name from its central place of operation, the Source Theatre on 14th St NW. But the name also pays homage to the source of the festival itself: the dozens of playwrights whose work are being produced.

Writers are truly the source of theater and some 130 full-length scripts, we're told, were submitted for this year's festival, which continues through June 28.

From them, three full length works were chosen to be produced and set the tone for a dozen and a half 10-minute works that are also produced. Finally, an "artistic blind date" offers three new works commissioned on the three broad categories, none of which you'd immediately guess. They are: "Science & Soulmates," "Mistakes & Media" and "Love & Botany."

Rebecca Bossen's Blue Straggler is the centerpiece of the "Science & Soulmates" portion and was last of the three plays to make their debut. (The others are Tim Guillot's The Word and the Wasteland and Kelly Lusk's (a love story)).

And yes, Blue Straggler is all about science and soul mates. Jenny Donovan plays a would-be astrophysicist stressing out about her dissertation and trying to come close to a formula that will solve all her problems.

Heidi Fortune plays the chocolatier who lures her away from equations for a moment to tempt her with the candy's dark creamy phenethylamine. They fall in love and argue like couples do, even as the deadlines loom.

But then there are these other things: seven different sized trunks on Robbie Hayes' stage that are referred to treasure chests. Actual keys that unlock the chests. And Luke Ciesiewicz as a guy in raggedy tails who seems to be cosmically directing things, a cross between a White Rabbit and the kind of character Christopher Lloyd might play in a Back to the Future sequel.

He holds all the cards here, or in this case the keys, even while Heidi's character begins to grow feathers. The metaphors aren't part of the math here, but they are definitely the things that are growing exponentially. Metaphors to the Nth degree.

If Amy Schumer didn't just do a devastating skit that obliterated that notion that "the universe" is the force that makes one break up or get back together or drop out of school or graduate, or as she put it "a force sending cosmic guidance to white women in their 20s," this might have had more resonance for me.

As it was, I felt most aligned with Sarah Holt's characterization of the mother, who only wanted the best for her daughter and tries to keep an open mind but isn't really ready to go with all the cosmic stuff. Her winning performance succeeds in grounding director Patrick Pearson's whole production.

In the end, the successful astrophysicist is able to explain all about black holes and other types of stars including the one that gives Blue Straggler its title. By then, I wasn't thinking so much about space as what could possibly have been in the 127 scripts that got rejected for this.

Running time: Two hours, with one 10-minute intermission.

Blue Straggler continues through June 28 at the Source Theatre, 1835 14th St NW, Washington, D.C. Call 866-811-4111 or get tickets online.

Photo: Jenny Donovan and Heidi Fortune in the Source Festival's "Blue Straggler." Photo by C. Stanley Photography.

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