Will Arbery has a knack for developing with unmemorable play titles. “Heroes of the Fourth Turning,” his award-winning drama produced by Rogue Machine Theatre in 2023, has the deceptive ring of a generically violent online game.
“Evanston Salt Costs Climbing,” his 2018 drama now receiving its Southern California premiere in a Rogue Machine manufacturing on the Matrix Theatre, might be a bullet level in a comptroller’s budgetary report.
But it surely’s a most delectably bizarre play, experimental in type and frenetically playful in language. Arbery appears to be impressed by Mac Wellman and the road of neo-American absurdists that adopted him. However there’s a young vulnerability to his characters, and the daffy empathy that suffuses the writing is exclusive to Arbery.
“Evanston Salt Costs Climbing” has little in widespread with “Heroes of the Fourth Turning.” For many who appreciated the bizarre political vantage level of “Heroes,” of being eavesdroppers on the non-public quarrels of younger non secular conservatives, “Evanston” will appear to be a go to to Mars.
The journey is value it, even in the event you go away confused. It’s OK to be often bewildered within the theater. A brief cessation in interpretive management can open new cognitive portals. “Evanston” could also be too indulgently idiosyncratic to be thought of a significant work, however the play’s offbeat enchantment has a means of making neighborhood out of skinny air — or maybe I ought to say out of a shared sensibility for wayward human comedy.
Arbery’s characters can’t assist betraying their ache for connection, at the same time as they work steadfastly to cowl up their want. Guillermo Cienfuegos, who directed Rogue Machine’s very good manufacturing of “Heroes of the Fourth Turning,” leans into the strangeness of “Evanston” with out shedding sight of the fragile amiability that marks the characters’ twisted habits.
Hugo Armstrong performs Basil and Michael Redfield performs Peter, the 2 salt truck drivers who’re struggling to outlive the frigid chilly of their job and the vacancy of their lives. Each come to know loss, Basil as perpetrator and Peter as sufferer. However their bond, the way in which they assist anchor one another, helps them face the desolation that appears to stand up from the very roads they clear.
Mark Mendelson’s scenic design, enhanced by Michelle Hanzelova-Bierbauer’s projections, creates a wintry panorama in the midst of Los Angeles. A salt dome, a break room on the depot, the within cab of one of many vans and an Evanston front room make up this chilly theatrical cosmos.
Hugo Armstrong and Michael Redfield in “Evanston Salt Costs Climbing.”
(Jeff Lorch)
Basil and Peter’s topsy-turvy banter has a number of the hallmarks of an old-school comedy duo. Armstrong, who pilots the manufacturing along with his barreling theatrical vitality, adopts an accent that I initially took to be Russian or Jap European however seems to be Greek. The far-fetched nature of the persona — Armstrong’s Basil is likely to be mistaken for a non secular cult chief — doesn’t in any respect undermine the authenticity of the characterization. Basil reveals himself not by his biography however by his concern for others and his fundamental decency. He doesn’t need anybody to succumb to the disappointment that’s at all times threatening to drag him underneath.
Redfield’s Peter is a blue-collar schlub preventing suicidal despair. His marriage has outrun its emotional validity. When his spouse dies in a automobile accident on an icy highway that he and Basil had salted, he’s too shocked to really feel a lot of something, besides maybe guilt that his murderous fantasies had one way or the other come true.
He’s not a monster, although monstrous ideas percolate inside him. He cares for his younger daughter as finest he’s in a position to, even when it means Domino’s Pizza a number of nights per week. When Basil shares with him one in all his wacky brief tales, Peter at all times finds one thing good to say, irrespective of how trivial. When Basil worries that his concepts are too on the market, Peter reassures him that persons are all bizarre.
Lesley Fera, left, and Kaia Gerber in “Evanston Salt Costs Climbing.”
(Jeff Lorch)
Lesley Fera, within the manufacturing’s most lovable efficiency, performs Jane Maiworm, the general public works administrator. Maiworm, as she’s referred to as on the job, is unfailingly pleasant with Basil and Peter. (It seems she’s having an affair with Basil, however her Midwestern niceness is simply a part of who she is.)
She comes up with a plan to modernize snow-clearing in Evanston, advocating for a brand new de-icing expertise that might render salt vans a factor of the previous. She doesn’t wish to put Basil and Peter out of labor, however the environmental case is simply too urgent to disregard.
A widow, Maiworm is elevating her grownup stepdaughter, Jane Jr. (Kaia Gerber), whose emotional unsteadiness is a supply of nice consternation. As a mom, Maiworm has the most effective intentions, however work dominates her life. When issues come up, her behavior is to hunt administrative options somewhat than contain herself extra personally.
Gerber provides quirky life to Jane Jr.’s neurotic sensitivity. As self-dramatizing as she is self-effacing, the character is ill-equipped for on a regular basis life. However her compassion provides her a outstanding lucidity about different individuals’s struggles.
Surreal figures crop up in “Evanston,” together with Jane Jacobs, the creator of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Maiworm worships Jacobs’ civic instance, however Jacobs (performed in burlesque vogue by Armstrong) suggests her acolyte doesn’t actually perceive the lesson of her books, which is that neighborhoods get their vitality from the connections of individuals, not by finest bureaucratic practices.
Maiworm is an administrator who actually cares. However like everybody else within the play, she has hassle revealing the jumble of fears and longings locked inside her.
Don’t let the forbiddingly bureaucratic title idiot you. The humanity of “Evanston Salt Costs Climbing” will heat your coronary heart.
‘Evanston Salt Costs Climbing’
The place: Rogue Machine (within the Matrix Theatre), 7657 Melrose Ave., L.A.
When: 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, Mondays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 9
Tickets: $45-$60
Data: roguemachinetheatre.org or (855) 585-5185
Working time: 1 hour, 35 minutes (no intermission)
