Menorca Playwright: Robert Koon. At: 16th Street Theater, 6420 16th, Berwyn. Phone: 708-795-6704; $16. Runs through: Oct. 16
The Sound of a Yellow Flower Playwright: Dustin Spence. At: Strangeloop Theatre at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland. Phone: 773-276-0458; $10-$15. Runs through: Oct. 3
Don't you hate it when expectations aren't met? This hurts especially when you're anticipating something that never happens—or when something that does happen comes from way out of left field without warning.
These are respective flaws in two recently opened world-premiere dramas: Robert Koon's Menorca for 16th Street Theater in Berwyn and The Sound of a Yellow Flower for Strangeloop Theatre in Chicago. Both plays offer great dramatic scenes for actors to sink their teeth into, but the dramas disappoint since they don't fully deliver on what you think they could.
Koon's Menorca centers on a Basque forensic archeologist named Ollie ( Kirsten d'Aurelio ) as she oversees a dig in Menorca, Spain, while flashing back to a conversation with Latino-American U.S. Border Patrol agent George ( Juan Gabriel ) near the Mexican border of Baja California.
In both locations, skeletal remains of women have been found, which might build expectations that the play will turn into a murder-mystery. Instead, Koon uses the remains as symbols for Ollie to question her place in the world as a perpetual outsider ( and her unsatisfying relationship with her by-the-rules university-researcher boyfriend ) .
While this back-and-forth journey of self-realization for Ollie is an eloquent one on the nature of national identity, Koon clutters up the story with under-characterized college interns in the Menorca scenes. Koon also opts not to wrap up the mystery behind the Baja remains.
These omissions make Menorca feel like something is ultimately missing, even though the handsome production, under Ann Filmer's direction, proves to be vital and timely in light the growing xenophobia that is currently being stoked for ugly political gain in the United States today.
A glaring omission in terms of build up for a game-changing plot point is what ultimately undoes Dustin Spence's drama The Sound of a Yellow Flower. The drama focuses on four unsatisfied souls in the modern-day oppressive dictatorship of the former Soviet republic of Belarus.
A once-nationalist violinist named Sasha ( Rich Logan ) is back in his homeland with his activist American wife, Zoe ( Samantha Garcia ) , much to the disappointment of his former friend-turned-government official Nikolai ( Mark Pracht ) , who wields his power brutally over dissenters and his ex-junkie prostitute girlfriend, Natalia ( Meghan M. Martinez ) .
With her great actors, director Letitia Guillaud shapes a fairly honest and gritty staging ( which fits compactly into Glen Anderson's utilitarian pop-out gray set ) . But playwright Spence doesn't hold up his end of the bargain when he fails to provide any foreshadowing to a cataclysmic ending that is as abrupt as it is unexplained.
So while both Menorca and The Sound of a Yellow Flower both have commendable elements, they ultimately don't take you on the journey that you were expecting them to.
