Architecting

For a young company, nothing hurts like success. Already, Rachel Chavkin and her TEAM collective have had a flurry of well-deserved attention. A year ago, their delightful Particularly in the Heartland used pastiche, audience interaction and the staggeringly talented Kristin Sieh to unpack a whole picnic basket of Midwestern clichs. So could it just be elevated expectations that make their sprawling, occasionally offensive Architecting such a disappointment?

One problem is bloat. The TEAM’s collage process generates an intimidating amount of material, and boiling it down has left them with dramaturgical pudding. Boldly (but not wisely), they stir together everything from racial politics in Gone with the Wind to the efforts to rebuild New Orleans; they are so flooded with content that a new plotline launches nearly two hours in. To their immense credit, everything does manage to connect: Nodes include an overwhelmed redevelopment architect (Libby King), a defensive Margaret Mitchell (Jessica Almasy) and a movie crew filming a bowdlerized version of Tara. But connecting does not mean illuminating, and the results are artificially hectic rather than provocatively complex.

The company does earn points for writing in several black characters, but promptly stumbles by having white company member Jake Margolin play them. An all-white company blithely taking the South to task for racism smells distressingly of a self-indulgent dorm-room bull session. The TEAM may succeed with future endeavors, but this time, despite Sieh’s marvelous turn as Scarlett, the current project can’t make us give a damn.