Everyone in the fictional town of Tavistown, N.Y., is preparing for the high school’s 40th production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”— after all, that’s why they’re in the Guinness World Records.
Town historian Zoe (Taylor Dooley) and her friends, theater teacher Miriam (Megan Cramer) and doctor Felicia (Danye Brown), raised their children together anticipating the day that they too would perform in “Our Town.” But as high school and hormones would have it, Miriam’s daughter Hadley (Lizzy Liu) and Felicia’s son Matt (Parker Fox Ciliax) went the way of jocks and cheerleaders, while Zoe’s son went the way of a social pariah. So, it’s no surprise then that as Matt and Hadley are preparing to play the leads in “Our Town,” Zoe’s son remains in the projection booth — unseen and ignored.
However, he is about to leave everyone in Tavistown with an opening night they’ll wish they could forget.
Jennifer Barclay's "Ripe Frenzy" is art imitating life in the worst way. Onstage at Synchronicity Theatre through May 6, the script gets into the minds of those affected by mass shootings and shows that the next one could happen anywhere. The play is a part of a National New Play Network rolling world premiere and Atlanta is the second stop, with Synchronicity's artistic director Rachel May at the helm. May does a nice job of building the tension from the opening scene to a traumatizing finale; however, she struggles to pull an even performance out of Dooley as Zoe.
The story is told from Zoe's perspective as the mother of a troubled young man, and he never actually appears onstage. She narrates the story, addressing the audience, and flows between past and present tense, much like her role in the one-woman-show "Throw Me on the Burnpile and Light Me Up" at Aurora Theatre last summer. Dooley has a huge task in going in and out of time and consciousness, and she executes with varying levels of success. She does a nice job of pulling the audience into Tavistown's charm and conveying the guilt that Zoe feels. However, transitions between reality and Zoe's conscience are sometimes unclear, and Dooley doesn't quite relay the depth of the mother of a boy who has committed a heinous crime.
The rest of the ensemble delivers adequate performances as supporting characters to Zoe’s memories. A camping scene the night before the play opens allows for some beautiful moments between the women, and Liu and Ciliax are quintessential bratty teenagers. Though Zoe’s son is never seen onstage, their characterization of him is effective in relaying his isolation.
The set, designed by Kristina Adler and Barrett Doyle, looks like a deconstructed classroom with wooden chairs strewn across the stage and pieces of chairs trailing from the floor over a door frame. May’s inventive direction uses ladders and chairs as the only set pieces, functioning as trees and houses for the set of “Our Town.” Videos and projections designed by Jared Mezzocchi are another character in the play and serve as a historical slide show, scenery, the flashbacks in Zoe’s mind and footage from her son’s GoPro camera before the shooting.
This is not the first play about a school shooting, but what distinguishes “Ripe Frenzy” is that Barclay asks the audience to have sympathy for the mother of the shooter. She has crafted a packed 80 minutes of suspense and social commentary, not focused on how angry boys get guns, but on how boys become angry in the first place. She also explores the genetic passage of trauma, using evidence from Holocaust survivors and their children to tell the story of America’s collective trauma.
Days before the Tavistown shooting, the kids and the moms are consumed by the news of another mass shooting in a fictional Michigan town. They even ridicule “Bryan James McNamara’s” mother for not seeing the signs and not knowing that he had ammunition in his room. However, much like in the real world, this shooting is like thunder in the distance until lightning strikes at home.
Last month, kids staged walkouts and marched on the nation's Capitol demanding an end to gun violence after 17 people were killed Feb. 14 at Parkland High School in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Still, as a country, there is a resistance to finding a place of compromise between no guns and guns for all. There is a desperate need to do the collective work of addressing mental health concerns and also creating reasonable regulations about background checks, gun sales and accessories that aid in violent crimes. It's not impossible, but it is hard.
With this play come opportunities for discussion. There will be a moderated discussion after every performance, and a two-hour community roundtable before the April 21 show is aimed at “working towards some common solutions, not just (people) complaining and attacking each other,” May said. (You can attend that without a play ticket.)
Zoe explains away her son’s behavior until the bottom falls out — only then are details revealed about social media rants and a once emotionally abusive father. To suppress her memories of the shooting, Zoe repeats “Positivity is a choice we make. It’s a choice we can all make.” However, what we resist persists, and she, along with everyone in Tavistown, must contend with the fact that a talented boy did a terrible thing. In the same way, Americans must acknowledge the behaviors that are ignored when someone is in trouble before it leads to another Charleston, Las Vegas, Orlando, Sutherland Springs or Parkland. Barclay’s script gives the audience a lot to inhale — hopefully, the collective exhale will soon come.
Staff writer Jill Vejnoska contributed to this review.
THEATER REVIEW
“Ripe Frenzy”
Through May 6. 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. $26-$36; $23-$33 students and seniors. Also, a student matinee at 10:30 a.m. April 27. Matinee tickets: $15 apiece for groups of 10 students or more; $10 apiece for groups of 50 students or more; single tickets $23. ("Ripe Frenzy" is recommended for ages 13 and up.) Synchronicity Theatre, 1545 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. 404-484-8636, www.synchrotheatre.com.
Bottom line: Jennifer Barclay's "Ripe Frenzy" is a timely play that examines the emotional trauma of school shootings.
