Review: THE WILTING POINT Premieres With Hope And Tremendous Heart at The Keegan Theatre

The Wilting Point, written by Graziella Jackson, Keegan Theatre's 2022-2023 Playwright in Residence, and directed by Danielle A. Drakes, opens on reporter and host of the award-winning podcast Clime, Mina Melo (Beverlix Jean-Baptiste) as she records the introduction to her latest episode. As she ruminates on a recent project by an artist who launched a bonsai tree into space and billionaire Maximillian Wasser's (Silas Gordon Brigham) plans for colonizing Mars, Mina wrestles with dueling philosophies of eco-nihilism and optimism, a central preoccupation of the play. In looking at the images from this strange bonsai tree project, she reflects, she feels something she hasn't felt in a long time: hope.

This emotion appears difficult for Mina to hold on to, however, when the media conglomerate that bought out her studio tasks her with the project of adapting Clime for streaming. The producer, Finley Grey (Judy Lewis), wants Mina to pick back up on investigating an unsolved murder in a small Southern Colorado community. Having previously covered the murder, Mina argues that there is no story there and that she believes the primary suspect, Udo (Gabriel Alejandro), is innocent. Finley isn't looking for the truth, however, just good TV.

Despite her protests, Mina ends up interviewing Tuca (Sally Ann Flores), Udo's mother and the mayordomo of her family's acequia. Tuca is an incredibly compelling figure in The Wilting Point. She is strong-willed, protective, and dedicated to preserving her community's traditional channel irrigation farming technique, even in the face of worsening drought and rising costs. She avoids Mina's questions about the murder, talking instead of the land. She feels change coming, she tells Mina, sees it written in the cracks of the earth and the stars in the sky, and fears what it means for the future. When Mina asks why Tuca bothers sticking around, Tuca insists she has a duty to her family, her community, and the land they've tended for generations.

This is a responsibility Tuca tries desperately to confer upon Udo and her grandchild River (Sophia Colón Roosevelt), a spunky and passionate teen who, over the course of the play, takes on a climate activist mantle akin to Greta Thunberg. Mina, compelled by River frankness and passion, reckons with her role as a storyteller and her duty to reveal the truth, ultimately collaborating with River on a story about the acequia community and the danger it faces.

As River's activism flings them onto a global stage, the show oscillates between scenes of Tuca's family on her hacienda and scenes of Maximillian Wasser. Scenes of Wasser show him proselytizing to his fans about a future for humanity secured through the metaverse and colonizing Mars, a not-so-subtle allusion to certain real-life tech moguls. By setting such a discordant and dislikable character against Tuca and her family, Jackson chews on the question of who Wasser's technological ambitions will truly serve. Set against River's activism and Tuca's protective love, two characters devoted to preserving a future on Earth for all people, Wasser's fantasy of a Mars appears shamefully fatalist, self-serving, and absurd. It's not a clever solution to an inevitable impending apocalypse but a shirking of his personal culpability in bringing about such doom in the first place.

If that seems like a lot for one play to contend with, well, it is. The Wilting Point, as described by playwright Graziella Jackson, was written to act as a time capsule. Certainly, it succeeds in demonstrating the staggering chaos and complexity of modern life, the sense of overwhelm that comes from all we're asked to digest in a single day. As such, it seems reductive to call The Wilting Point a play about climate change, though that is certainly its central preoccupation. It's also about the effect of dwindling local media landscapes, the tension between familial duty and personal ambition, the potentially life-changing effect of immersing oneself in one's community, the power found in using one's voice to advocate for change, the dangers of unchecked technological progress and greed, as well as the personal sacrifices one may make in choosing to act for the greater good.

With all of this in mind, The Wilting Point urges us to consider those who tended to and inhabited the earth before us and to imagine those who will come after we are long gone. It asks, what world will we give them to inherit?

The Wilting Point is onstage at The Keegan through April 30, 2023. The run time is approximately 2 hours, plus one 15-minute intermission.

Main photo: Beverlix Jean-Baptiste as Mina Melo. Credit: Mike Kozemchak.

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