Playwright: Madeleine George At: Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Tickets: 773-975-8150;
Article Link Here ; $20-$36 Runs through: April 27
First, an explanation of the title: The Pratt Museum of Natural History houses seven woolly mammoth skeletons, donated by a wealthy alumnus of the small Massachusetts college where they reside. Decades later, this campus repository is mostly utilized by students ( and a few faculty members, too ) as a trysting place for age-old fertility rites, ostensibly because "nobody ever goes there." The trustees, therefore, have pragmatically decided that the land it occupies would be better utilized as the site of a new freshman dormitory—a proposal raising questions regarding the disposal of the prehistoric pachyderms.
This isn't really the story that Madeleine George wants to tell, however. Instead, she introduces Cynthia—"Cindy" to her intimates— Wreen, the school dean who not only must field arguments over the value of the past versus the needs of the present, but who has just learned that her former domestic partner, Greer, has stage-four cancer and is undergoing experimental medical treatment. Cindy generously offers Greer a bed for the duration of the therapeutic regimen, giving no thought to how this will affect the considerably younger paramour already comfortably settled in their quasi-marital boudoir. ( Yeah, they're all lesbians, but the author sees no need to comment on it, so why should we? )
Fortunately, New Age disciple Andromeda earned her degree in anthropology, making her view the reconfiguration of household dynamics as an opportunity to observe "alternative kinship structures" far more intricate than those of Friends, the popular 1990s television series constituting her hitherto most in-depth field study. As each of the women struggles with her own individual crisis, the sororal tensions ultimately resolve themselves—with the help of some whiskey, medicinal cannabis and primordial pantheism.
Despite the inclusion of gags like the diorama exhibit's mannequins voicing the conversation of bored students gawking through the glass barriers, a protestor in mammoth mask and puppet-prosthetics attempting a huffy exit, and the Pratt's chief custodian—played by Steve Herson with an impeccably non-rhotic regional accent—sharing the local newspaper coverage of the town and gown debate over property rights, what distinguishes this from standard-issue screwball sitcom is the sympathy George mandates for her characters and the seriousness she ascribes to their problems. Under Jeremy Wechsler's direction, Meighan Gerachis, Kristen Magee and the always-riveting Laura T. Fisher likewise endow their personae with strength and intelligence, while generating enough warmth to melt the ice imprisoning the furry giants—whose bones do eventually find a new home—so long ago.
