"Freeze Frame!": The Museum Play
Saturday we went to go see The Museum Play at WET. We've been musing over what to tell you about it since then. It's a world premiere, see, and why give the story away? So few things these days have the opportunity to surprise us. If you don't care about that then by all means, read this Weekly review, or this bizarre, what-was-he-drinking? one in the P-I. [UPDATE: Here's the Stranger's AW! with a response within shouting distance of ours, and the Times' Misha Berson, with whose review we also find ourselves nodding agreeably.]
The Museum Play is being performed Thursdays through Mondays through September 25 in the Little Theatre on 19th Avenue East, at Mercer Street. Curtain time is 8pm. Tickets are $10-$18.
The show is written by "exciting young playwright" Jordan Harrison. While entertaining, it is not the most actor-friendly play we've ever seen -- in some ways, the amazingly detailed, inventively-used set by Jennifer Zeyl has more personality than any particular character. We sympathize -- little is more difficult than dramatizing the why of a unique romantic obsession, though the exhibition of one character's fixation has a stirringly creepy power.
The play is a brief 70-minute illustration of the conflict between our desire for the perfect unchanging moment and life's need for novelty. It's gently absurdist -- the museum setting is described in a McSweeney-esque way -- and not eager enough to explore its conflicts. (Museums, the impulse toward collection, reverence for the past -- none of this is truly anti-life, despite the play's insistence.)
We were impressed by Lathrop Walker as the unlucky-in-love Vin, obsessive, too tied to work, but still sympathetic. Mikano Fukaya's prissy and power-hungry Curator struck us as one-note, not fully formed. Patricia Nelson's affecting, anarchic Lucy seems the success of an actor bringing more to a part than is there. A good deal of the entertainment is due to Marya Sea Kaminski's brisk direction -- though she also knows when a scene can take a longer beat. Our final thought is that this play may be the perfect date for a Friday night on Capitol Hill -- bi-curious, funny, and over before it gets serious.
Photo by Victoria Lahti: Marc Kenison and Lathrop Walker in the world premiere of Jordan Harrison’s THE MUSEUM PLAY.
