Review: CATF THE WEDDING GIFT is Visually Stunning, but Difficult to Decipher

At its basic essence, a play tells a story. But when the audience has difficulty understanding the story and the language, the message, no matter how poignant or powerful, is lost. The Wedding Gift, a world premiere play at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, is a visual feast for Audience members, but due to the storytelling method, many Audience members are unable to understand the imaginative story.

Set "so far in the future, it's stupid" (according to playwright Chisa Hutchinson ), The Wedding Gift portrays a futuristic society and focuses on the royal family as the princess Nahlis enters into an arranged marriage with an immature and brutish prince, Beshrum. For a lavish wedding gift, Nahlis is presented with Doug, a male in a cage who is intended to fulfill her sexual needs. Doug is panicked at both his new surreal surroundings and having no memory of how he came to be trapped in a foreign world as a sex slave. He desperately tries to understand his new world and devise a way to escape.

In a brilliant reversal of historical roles, all of the royalty and most of the population in the futuristic world is African American, while Doug, a slave, is Caucasian. A bold, and often problematic, choice for the production is that all of the characters, sans Doug, speak in an invented language evolved in the futuristic society which Doug (and purposely the audience) cannot understand. The cast brings the challenging characters to brilliant life under imaginative direction from May Adrales and are to be commended for their commitment and dedication to the foreign language and physical stances which constitute the futuristic world.

Jason Babinsky gives a phenomenal performance as combination pet and sexual slave, Doug. Babinsky's character expertly ranges from sarcastically awkward to wonderfully charismatic to sincerely heartbreaking. His monologues about his daughter and how he is treated as a slave displayed his fantastic dramatic abilities and many of the scenes with Margaret Ivey and fellow ensemble members reveal his strong comedic chops. As the bride, Nahlis, Margaret Ivey also gives an incredible performance, transforming the character from a pitifully spoiled princess to a wonderfully sweet and complex young woman facing her first true challenge in life.

As the groom, Beshrum, Damian Thompson is violently powerful and seems to be enjoying bringing the character you love-to-hate to life. Nafeesa Monroe has a standout performance as Onjah, a royal advisor who can haltingly communicate with Doug in English due to a dark secret. Monroe's wonderfully warm, strong matriarch character was delightfully reminiscent of an empowered Lady Thiang from The King and I.

Bianca LaVerne Jones and Brian D. Coats are stoic and excellently regal as Nahlis' parents, Kamsuh the Queen and Torosh the King. Some of Jones' facial expressions and physical stances were incredibly hilarious and the audience did not need to understand the futuristic language to understand her intentions and reactions during the dinner sequence in Act II.

Edward O'Blenis has a scene stealing turn at the top of Act II as a wonderfully sassy and over the top Translating Attendant. Mikayla Bartholomew, Tyler John Fauntleroy, Tre' Henley, Ciara Monique McMillian and Vincent Ramirez help bring the futuristic world to life with their exaggerated stances and impressive physical cohesion as the Royal Attendants.

Lavish costumes, designed by Peggy McKowen, are a visual feast. Unique silhouettes, rich, bold colors and creative accessories bring the fashion of the future to life. The set, designed by David M. Barber, is equally stunning with mega walls in hues of aqua and gold and a bold, sleek designs for the futuristic furniture in the bedrooms. Aaron Anderson also deserves special mention for very realistic fight choreography. The actors truly look as if they are in danger during several of the physical sequences and handle the challenging combat sequences safely while still scaring the audience.

The overall issue of the The Wedding Gift lies in the language barrier. The point is crystal clear: in this futuristic world, a brand new language has evolved. As the audience, we experience the world from Doug's point of view by not understanding the language either. The problem is,with the typical dramatic format audiences are accustomed to, the audience knows crucial information that other characters in the play lack. Crucial information is missing for a large portion of the show and sparsely provided far too late for the audience to digest.

The imaginative device of creating an entirely new language is a fascinating endeavor, but more in theory than practice for an already new world premiere play. When a language barrier is used for comedic effect in extraneous scenes, the result is typically hilarious; when the language barrier is employed for multiple scenes containing important information, the result is typically tragic. The Wedding Gift is visually scrumptious and presents a complex and thought-provoking concept; it would greatly help if an alternative theatrical method was used, in addition to the fantastic cast, to debut this creative futuristic world to a modern audience.

The Wedding Gift continues to run as one of the five plays in rotating repertory at the Contemporary American Theater Festival. The Wedding Gift performances occur in the Frank Center Theater on the campus of Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV. The final performance occurs July 31 at 6:30 PM. For more information about the show schedule, the 2016 season or to order tickets, please visit www.catf.org.

Photo Credit: CATF Media Gallery

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