By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
“Mr. Burns: a post-electric play” opens with the country experiencing dark times … literally.
We find the characters huddled around a camp fire. There is a couch that someone hauled out giving the scene a college party feel.
But with one of the characters, Sam (Jacob Stoliker) patrolling with a weapon we know this isn’t a camp out.
The country’s electrical grid has collapsed, and all its nuclear power plants have melted down.
This is a world of rumors, hearsay, fearful silences, and The Simpsons.
“Mr Burns,” with script and lyrics by Anne Washburn and music by Michael Friedman, opens tonight (Thursday Nov. 21) at 8 p.m. in the Donnell Theatre on campus. The show’s run continues with shows Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday 2 p.m. Visit bgsu.edu/arts or call 419-372-8171 for tickets.
To pass the time Jenny (Victoria Norland), Maria (Lorna Jane Patterson), whose property this is, and Matt (Harmon R. Andrews) are trying to recall the “Cape Feare” episode from “The Simpsons.”
They go through scene by scene, mangling the order, and explaining parts as they go, correcting themselves, admitting to lapses in their memory. What was that exchange between Marge and Sideshow Bob?
This is interrupted when Sam thinks he’s heard a sound. Everyone tenses up. False alarm.
Then Gibson (Finnegan Burres) shows up. He’s welcomed warily after being subjected to a body search. The newcomer and the party exchange glares. Then they go through what has already become a ritual, asking if Gibson has seen any of their love ones. He has a notebook of those he’s encountered, as do the other four.
Each name meets with disappointment, especially one close call: The name matches, as does the physical description, but past residences and jobs do not. Jenny is crestfallen.
Through this we learn what the cast has already made clear in their interactions. These are not long time friends, but people set adrift who have found their way to this unidentified place somewhere in the Northeast about 100 miles of Ashbury Park, New Jersey.
Gibson relates his travels, the path he’s taken from Framingham, Massachusetts, to this unknown location.
He may have no information about those the others seek but he does know that Sideshow Bob line — courtesy of an ex-girlfriend. He never watched the show. What he does know is the music of Gilbert and Sullivan. That’s appreciated as well because HMS Pinafore (coincidentally just staged three weeks ago at BGSU) plays a significant role in the episode.
These parallel reconstructions of the cataclysm and The Simpsons episode shape the entire three-act play.
Each act sweeps the audience forward. The world changes, but still is shaped by trauma. In the second act finds the characters now are part of an acting troupe, joined by Colleen (Nicole Tuttle) and Quincy (Alyx Fisher) who recreate Simpson episodes, including commercials, from the pre-crash time.
Rumors are still their prime source of information. What did happen to all the Diet Coke?
What they’re most concerned with are the activities of competing troupes. All of them construct their shows by buying lines from people who remember the shows. One company is dominant.
It’s clear, though unstated, that the fear is not just that someone will stage a better show but something more existential.
Still they shake this off to do a chorus line number for an advertisement, and then a long medley of faux rock ’n’ roll songs. Maria and Quincy argue over whether entertainment should have meaning or, as Quincy argues, whether meaningless entertainment is more valuable in a world heavy with meaning.
The final act brings us 75 years into the future, where paintings depicting the Simpson characters arc across the top of the stage like saints in a Renaissance cathedral. A chorus led by Edna Krabappel (Belle Starr Johnson) has a long chanted prelude to the show. The words evoke that the disaster, including the chanting of names and ages. This leads to a highly distorted version of “Cape Feare” with Mr. Burns, the owner a nuclear plant, cast as the villain in place of Sideshow Bob.
Marge and Lisa sing a paean to Springfield, including all the simple amenities, streetlights and phones, that once were part of daily life.
This shows theater that has the power to help people remember — though what they remember has been reshaped into myth — and to cling to some sense of hope even in the darkest days.
And the audience may well step out wondering how “Mr. Burns” got from that campfire to this closing extravaganza. They will just have to piece it together.
