There’s something a bit off about Miriam, the protagonist of 7th Monarch. You can tell right away because of her space helmet. Once a wunderkind determined to be an astronaut, she’s now a childlike 33-year-old living with her parents in their Indiana house—that is, until her parents mysteriously disappear and she’s caught forging their Social Security checks.
Playwright Jim Henry wants us to accept Miriam as a disturbed yet charming quixotic dreamer, but she is too contrived a creation—more quirk than character—to win our sympathy. The space helmet is the most understated thing about her: Credulity-straining photographic memory and instant recall make her a motormouth encyclopedia of NASA and Indiana arcana—in other words, a very annoying onstage presence. In Gretchen Hall’s ill-advisedly grating performance, she comes off as a Pollyannaish Rain Man badly in need of Ritalin.
Oddities abound. The play is set in 1991, but for no clear reason. A prison “interrogation room” has flowery wallpaper because Miriam’s family home forms the permanent backdrop of the set. But the greatest mystery of all—and far more compelling than the story’s own whodunit—is whatever drew such seasoned actors as Michael Rupert, Michael Cullen and Leslie Hendrix (the Law & Order medical-examiner lady) to such a commonplace script.—Garrett Eisler