Get us in your inbox

Search

The Pavilion

  • Theater, Drama
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Advertising

Time Out says

4 out of 5 stars

This metaphysical dramedy set in small-town Minnesota is bruising and hilarious.

Craig Wright’s 2005 play starts at about as macro a level as you can get: the creation of the universe. That’s a lot for a three-person dramedy. And, to be sure, the play’s ambitions occasionally get the best of it. But for all its bodysurfing across the slipstreams of time, it never loses focus on the very real, human story at its center. It’s a focus shared by director Jason Gerace and a talented cast in this bruising, hilarious new revival.

The Pavilion is hosted by an unnamed, metaphysically flexible narrator, played by Hannah Toriumi, who takes the audience from the aforementioned dawn of reality, through the course of human history, and finally to a high school reunion in the small Minnesota town of Pine City. Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is clearly a point of reference here.

This 20-year reunion, hosted in an old wooden pavilion set to be torn down (or burned down, really) the next day, is also the site of a smaller, more intriguing meeting. Voted as “cutest couple” back in 1998, Kari (Rebekah Ward) and Peter (Kyle A. Gibson) are seeing each other for the first time since, well, 1998.

Most high school relationships end in fireworks whose glow fades throughout the years. But not these two. Peter, you see, left town for college almost immediately after Kari became pregnant. She got an abortion and married a milquetoast golf pro, Hans, who thought he was saving her reputation, while Peter went on to a life of practicing psychiatry in the Twin Cities, seemingly shrugging off the horrible damage he had done to her.

The way she was treated by Peter has left Kari bitter, angry and in no mood to hear apologies. That’s unfortunate for him since apologizing is exactly the thing he’s come to this reunion to do. That, and maybe win her back—which, good luck.

The rest of the characters—and there are dozens—are all portrayed by Toriumi. She embodies an entire town’s worth of blowhards and neurotics, including all three members of an illicit love triangle. Toriumi does an exceptional job pivoting to and fro among the different classmates; in fact, the weakest parts of her performance are her monologues as the narrator.

However, that seems more a function of how Wright has written these sections than anything Toriumi does. In these passages, Wright frequently reaches for poetry but comes away with only handfuls of pretentiousness. It’s during these moments that Our Town comes most to mind, when one longs for the plainspokenness of Wilder’s Stage Manager.

As Peter, Gibson masterfully navigates the character’s choppy, contradictory waters. He makes Peter likeable enough to keep from getting booed off stage, but the actor never lets him off the hook either. He vacillates between huggable and slappable. That’s exactly right.

But it’s Ward who gives the play’s strongest, most knock-you-on-your-butt performance. Kari isn’t a woman consumed by her rage, but she never leaves home without it either. She’s tough, resourceful, funny, and not someone to be trifled with.

And there’s something about Ward’s performance that’s distinctly Midwestern too, and small-town Minnesotan at that. It’s a practicality that borders on nihilism, the kind of resilience that is only possible when you think happiness is a myth. Both Ward’s and Gibson’s performances are soaked in regret.

Under Gerace’s direction the play moves gracefully from moment to moment, which is not easy given how short many of the scenes are. He shapes the realistic drama between Ward and Gibson (who are married in real life) and nestles it carefully alongside the broader, Lake Wobegon stylings of Toriumi’s town folk menagerie.

The set, by Joanna Iwanick, subtly suggests the pavillion setting—a series of wooden slats, a small stage, folding chairs and a wall covered in purple balloons—while giving the space a fluidity, helped by Charles Cooper’s subtly effervescent lighting, that evokes the ebb and flow of time, history and creation. (It does a better job at that than Wright does, honestly.)

Meanwhile, the background soundscapes created by Ashley Petit helpfully root the action in the here and now. Even when the play threatens to spin off into the vastness of space, Gerace and company know exactly how to reel it back in.

Open Door Repertory. By Craig Wright. Directed by Jason Gerace. With Kyle A. Gibson, Hannah Toriumi, Rebekah Ward. Running time: 2hrs; one intermission.

Written by
Alex Huntsberger

Details

Address:
Price:
$27
Advertising
You may also like
You may also like