Fragmented, Yet Complete: Repeat. Repeat. at Burgeoning boom! Theater Company

A new theater has been born in South Lake Union. Founded by the boom! theater company, a capable handful of mostly-Cornish-graduates, the boom! stage is currently being christened with a world premier show, Repeat. Repeat., the seventh main stage performance by the company.

The script, which was devised by boom! over several months of collaboration, is inspired by two source texts: the 2006 play Iphigenia and Other Daughters by Ellen McLaughlin, and the 2007 novel Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje (who wrote the novel The English Patient).

boom! describes the drama as being set "in a barren and dusty world." One might add the words bleak, or desperate, or dying--the characters, almost all of them women, enduring an insufferable drought, which has driven away most of the men in search of water. Not unlike in The Trojan Women, the women of Repeat. Repeat. ally, devise, and feud in the grit of traumatic loss to eke out a precarious and tentative survival.

Beginning with fragmented, apparently disparate scenes, the narrative takes some time to coalesce, leaving the attendee initially head-scratching, deducing, and wondering, "Where is this? Does she know her? How did she do that?" Repeat. Repeat. takes some time to establish sure footing in a defined vision of reality. This may be a tradeoff for portraying such a complicated and unusual universe, that mechanics and relationships begin in unclarity. So attendees are presented with a challenge and an opportunity to draw necessary connections, to fully envision the completeness of the framework.

But it is complete. And when the pieces are arranged and the machine is set into motion, Repeat. Repeat. becomes a veritable powerhouse. The second half in particular is nearly all payoff, sending chills and filling in blanks with a clever, thorough, and unexpected series of tragic revelations. Here, in addition to showcasing considerable dramatic muscle, the production company exhibits a particular knack for design (but I won't ruin surprises here).

Repeat. Repeat. commendably and ambitiously handles "themes of family relations, desertion, and free will." The culminations that ultimately unite the show in cohesion reveal the strange journeys of Act I to have been arranged with a general value for concision, with only a few exceptions of redundancy withstanding. These journeys are worth the attention and patience they require to undergo, and moreover they are worth the price of admission to this young and promising theater.

Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m., through November 05 // the boom! theater, 429 Fairview Ave N // $10, tickets available through Brown Paper Tickets