Quake: The Journey Is All
Hyde Park Theatre, through June 14
Running Time: 1 hr, 10 min
Lucy is searching for something: a perfect love, a big love, a love that makes the earth move. And she’ll do whatever she has to do to find it, even if it means scouring the entire country (which she does), even if it means looking in the most unlikely places (like in the person of a female serial killer), even if it means swimming across an ocean. Even if it means never finding it at all. Even if it means that the journey is all she’ll ever know.
Hyde Park Theatre Artistic Director Ken Webster, who helms this production, has done some amazing things at his theatre. When he began his tenure, it was the third change of hands for the building in a decade and a half, and while his immediate predecessor, the Frontera Company, had turned the venue into a thriving enterprise (especially with FronteraFest, which Webster has continued to cultivate), that success didn’t guarantee Webster’s success. But success is what Webster has achieved. Every time I visit, whether for a production by Hyde Park or another company renting the space, the theatre is filled with people, and every time I visit I also discover something new, whether it’s an unfamiliar playwright or an actor or designer I’ve never encountered. In the case of Quake, it’s playwright Melanie Marnich, who writes witty, perceptive dialogue that’s feminist without a hint of overbearing attitude. Not feminist-lite, but feminist-friendly — feminist-logical. While at first glance her men, and even her women, may seem like caricatures, they’re much more than one-dimensional. Some are exactly what they appear, but most are more than we, or Lucy, ever expected.
Webster has his cast utilize a variety of acting styles, and in this the production doesn’t work. Some paint their characters big and broad, so much so that they overwhelm the tiny Hyde Park space. Others almost never stop moving, and all the extraneous movement, be it a twitching hand, twitching eyebrow, or swaying body, makes it difficult to discern what’s important in the story. The most effective performances always are the simplest: Matt Jones as both Brian, Lucy’s second big love, and the Auto Repair Man, who initially seems like such a charmer but hides something much more sinister; and Katherine Catmull as the serial killer, particularly in her final scene, in which she manages to threaten while doing little more than delivering her lines with an expert sense of tempo and volume. Paul Davis’ jagged, rocky set design at first appears thrown together, but Brad Carlin’s lights and videos do much to enhance its appeal, especially when evoking a city at night, and Robert S. Fisher provides what has become, for him, his usual appropriate, creative, supportive sound.
However, it’s Marnich’s quirky, almost surrealistic script that really stands out, particularly the journey of its heroine. Lucy’s perseverance and her intense belief that her success doesn’t hinge on finding what she is looking for are impressive; it isn’t the end of the journey but the journey itself that’s important. As more than one character says during the play, energy doesn’t die, no matter what anyone tells you. Energy continues, persists. It’s nature, it’s science — it’s out of our hands.
This article appears in June 6 • 2003.