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Published on 5/13/08
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For anyone who has had it up to their Fox-scarred eyeballs with faith-based politics—but thought What’s the Matter with Kansas? hit below the grain belt—director Rachel Chavkin has a prescription. And there’s no need to have an allergic reaction if it sounds a trifle biblical. Particularly in the Heartland wants you to love thy frickin’ neighbor, even if your neighbor votes Republican; finds the Left Behind series “very helpful”; and doesn’t think patriotism is a dirty word.
On a stage messy with little picket fences and big ideas, three Kansan siblings, tough girl Sarah (Libby King), adolescent Todd (Frank Boyd) and ten-year-old Anna (whirlwind performer Kristen Sieh) try to jury-rig a makeshift family. Their parents never make it back from Wal-Mart (they hit a little Rapture in traffic), so the strangers who keep showing up—a zombified Bobby Kennedy (Jake Margolin), Dorothy the ad-exec (Jessica Almasy) and a pregnant alien (Jill Frutkin)—will have to do. Despite using some familiar physical-theater chestnuts, the spirited T.E.A.M. soon explodes into the unexpected: They create people real enough to sustain an in-character audience Q&A and compassionate enough to infect a blasé public with their openheartedness. Simultaneously intelligent, rueful, celebratory, delightful and devastatingly sad (Come back, Bobby!), the show actually lives up to its ambitions. If after Heartland we can’t put the “us” back in “U.S.,” we’ll no longer have Kansas to blame. — Helen Shaw
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