Playwright: Dan Caffrey/ At: The Ruckus at The Athenaeum, 2936 N. Southport Ave. Tickets: 773-935-6875; www.AthenaeumTheatre.org; $18. Runs through: July 26
In 2004, a Redmoon Theatre spectacle featured a house submerged in the Jackson Park Lagoon up to its second floor windows. Actors rowed to it. In the months Redmoon spent creating the show, they never could have imagined its performances would coincide with Hurricane Katrina ravaging the Gulf Coast. Sometimes art imitates life in shockingly literal ways.
This world premiere, Matawan, has the same vibe increasing its potency. It's a poetic play inspired by shark attacks along the Jersey Shore in 1916. The Ruckus never could have supposed it would coincide with fresh shark attacks along the Carolina coast. Performed in a small space, the production nonetheless is big and pleasingly imaginative, a wonderful example of a low-budget Off-Loop troupe triumphing with smarts and passion.
Working with the ensemble over several years, playwright Dan Caffrey, director Allison Shoemaker and movement director Derek Van Barham developed delicate choreographic ways to present the shark ( Susan Myburgh ) in a dance-like way, and even the swells of the sea itself. Scenic designer Ashley Ann Woods cleverly puts viewers onstage facing the audience risers with all seats removed, thereby creating a steep, broad staircase as the primary set piece. Narrowed by side curtains as it ascends and bathed in blue light, the steps suggest the rolling sea rising towards the horizon. All the physical work is quite satisfying.
The 1916 attack killed three young men and a boy, leaving a fifth victim mangled but alive. Using the victims' real names, Caffrey is interested only in the dead; all portrayed as outside conventional society. Victim One is estranged from his father because he'd rather sing, act and write poetry. Victim Two is a foreigner. Victim Three is a bullied boy. Victim Four is a deeply closeted young tailor, Stanley Fisher ( Mike Steele ). Like E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Caffrey suggests that Americanot yet in World War I in 1916 but going through a fearful polio epidemichad unsettling forces bubbling just under the surface.
Caffrey focuses his very pithy dialogue on victims, families and friends, and not on attack details. He also gives the shark a voice bordering on sentience: hungry, enraged and itself an outsider. Caffrey sometimes brushes too lightly over expository details ( such as that Matawan is 11 miles from the ocean on a fresh water creek ) and he doesn't put forth a hero as focus jumps between victims. Fisher dominates Act II, but his actions are telling rather than heroic. Then again, the shark isn't really a villain.
The excellent 15-person cast creates haunting sound effects ( hollow pipes, flute, harmonica, saw, violin, wooden frog, etc. ) suggesting the eerie water world and supplying texture to this simply told but richly complex piece ( Matt Test, sound/music ).