Mr g

Play

with Jordan Ahnquist (Mr g), Obehi Janice (Aunt Penelope), Melissa Jesser (The Neighbor Girl), Vincent Ernest Siders (Uncle Deva)

The creator is lonely and bored and what better reason than divine entertainment would get “him” (It is a Him in this case) to up and produce a world. Mr g is a delightful riff on the extended thought process of such a being.

Mr g is not alone. Fortunately, he has a female counterpart, The Neighbor Girl (Melissa Jesser), hovering always on the edge of transcendental romance, to keep him honest. And, as well, there are his Aunt Penelope (Obehi Janice) and Uncle Deva (Vincent Ernest Siders), always jousting with him and playing off him, to give him a good run for his metaphysical money.

This idea play is one long string of conceptual probings, but it is wittily written, and adeptly directed, acted and staged; any threat of overwhelming conceptualization is absorbed into the dramatic staccatos of its punctuated and rhythmic interchanges.

As Mr g, Jordan Ahnquist is superbly fun and exacting in his dramatically gestural evocation of the trials and tribulations of the Almighty. It is a delightful ruse that sets the creator as a young man, barely out of adolescence, full of pre-galactic piss and vinegar, and just on the cosmic edge of infatuation with his preconceptual counterpart. The consequent idea that creation is the pure whim of a passionate youth is a sweet, charming and preternaturally seductive one and Ahnquist provides a wonderfully punctuated evocation of this embodiment.

As the female counterpart, The Neighbor Girl, Melissa Jesser is sassy and challenging, continually throwing down the critical gauntlet to The Creator of that very particular universe which He has fashioned so carefully, and which She, refreshingly, sometimes takes not so seriously at all.

All sorts of sight gags in the sets and props accompany the gradual emergence of civilization, evidence of considerable antediluvian wit traveling through the background radiation of the production.

The play is based essentially a long meditation on what it means to create a world rather than upon a particular challenge to character or relationship; the more quickly one adjusts to that expectation, the better off one will be throughout its epochal unfoldings.

Nonetheless, after some initial spoofiness plays itself out, there is a bit of inertia in the attenuation of the originating idea. Near the end the dramatic culmination comes more forcefully into focus, giving an energetic sense of the compromises of existence, and of the heartfelt complexities that frame the fabrication of All.

More of an outing in philosophy than in drama, the play is still a delight to watch. The actors are all very good and the direction by Wesley Savick, who also adapted the script from Alan Lightman’s book, is clearly and thoughtfully done. Kept sparkling and moving with stimulating choreography by Rozann Krauss, this idea trip, a little cosmically abstract at first blush, gains an earthiness and gutsiness as it goes along. With its witty articulations, dramatically effective deliveries add energetic staging, a good dose of resolve and punch get added to the discursive waters in which these loftily prepossessed, but entertainingly sentient, characters, swim.

– BADMan