"Archaeology"

Theatre review
"Archaeology" at the Kitchen Theatre
Ithaca Times
April 15, 2009
711 words
"Uncovering Adulthood"

full text here

Uncovering Adulthood

Mark Tedeschi

"Archaeology," by Rachel Axler. Directed by Margarett Perry. Starring Charlie Forray, Ace Heckathorn, Jack Paque, and Kristin Wheeler. With scenic designer Norm Johnson, lighting designer Jerry Thamm, costume coordinator Abigail Smith, sound designer Ben Truppin-Brown, and stage manager Abigail Davis.

A person's mid-twenties are typically viewed as an era for rediscovery and introspection. Childhood, teenage years, and time in college all provide separate but similar playing fields for untested activity, for experimentation. Eventually, it comes time to make heavy personal choices, and newly christened "grown-ups" look back at what they've learned. They dig through the scrapbooks of their memory to evaluate varied consequences and lessons learned. The theme of young-adult historical analysis permeates "Archaeology," an impressively produced but sometimes disappointing new play at the Kitchen Theatre.

"Archaeology," directed by Margarett Perry and written by former "The Daily Show with John Stewart" writer Rachel Axler, centers on Astin (Jack Paque) and Claire (Kristin Wheeler), two best-friend twentysomethings sharing a house in Upstate New York. Early one summer morning, an earthquake uprights the foundation of their (and only their) living space. The entrance and walkway to the house are both tilted sideways, door hanging open, beside the neat Wizard of Oz-meets-Dali vortex background (Norm Johnson, scenic designer).

Astin, a once-fat, math Ph.D.-dropout sporting an orange polo and plaid pants, stumbles onto the yard, confessing to Claire that he's too hungover to remember exactly when the tremor transpired - nor, for that matter, anything about the previous night. Claire, clad in her housekeeper's uniform and sipping absently on a vodka and lemonade, offers little help; it's immediately clear she's hiding something, some possibly crucial information that remains buried for most of the play.

Soon, help arrives - sort of. Two apparently untalented musicians-cum-grocery baggers-cum-part time Red Cross volunteers, John and Jon (har, har) storm onstage with paired wagons in tow filled with myriad supplies from Twinkies to electromagnets. John, or "H" (Charlie Forray) finds use for the latter when Astin confides that he's been working on an elaborate machine kept secret from Claire - instead, he'd told her he was creating a serialized robot corn cartoon. After an astute if slapdash explanation about Möbius strips and Klein bottles, John stares drop-jawed; Astin comments on his probable lack of understanding, and H becomes insulted.

Meanwhile, Jon (Ace Heckathorn) and Claire discover a crawl area beneath some loose floorboards in the house. Through some apt set and lighting manipulation (Jerry Thamm, lighting designer), the stage's floorboard section becomes the crawl area, where they submit to their childhood instincts and begin to dig. A sizable portion of Jon's stage time is spent highlighting his surfer-dude personality; nonetheless, his affectionate spontaneity impresses Claire.

Axler's script relies on boobish lines like "Man, who knew there was so much dirt underground!" and "Oh, you mean like E equals M.C. Hammer?" for laughs. They're delivered about as sharply as they could be, but the timing feels off even on some of the better jokes, an uncharacteristic directorial departure for Perry, whose knack for strict delivery allowed this season's Dykstra plays to hit their potential.

As Astin and H reconcile and make headway on the machine, Claire and Jon dig up some peculiar artifacts. During one scene of discovery, Ben Truppin-Brown's sound design makes savvy use of some Casio keyboard music in lieu of dialogue to accent the imagination that accompanies unearthing something unexpected; the transitory music choices elsewhere in the play are equally evocative.

Claire finds out about Astin's machine and blows her stack. The hot-blooded arguments that bubble up in "Archaeology" may seem overcooked at first - but the confused emotional drive stays authentic to the almost-full-fledged-adulthood age the characters are grappling with.

The homonymy twins share little in common save their name, their volunteer uniforms, and their tendency to try really hard to sound profound. Their entrance into the disordered lives of Claire and Astin cuts into the lead characters' tangible best-friend chemistry. But inspection of the unspoken provides motivation for both journeys in "Archaeology"; Claire seeks explanation in stratification, while Astin ventures to manipulate time itself.

I won't spoil the final scene, since it's one of the most interesting in the play - certainly the best acted and featuring a laudable metamorphosis in the set design. Here, Perry returns to the superior sense of subtlety seen in, to name one, last year's "Old Times." The conclusion doesn't address every unanswered question, but Axler seems to prefer leaving the arching metaphors open to interpretation. Near the end of the first act, Jon hits something while digging. Claire says, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," a flag that what we're seeing isn't what it looks like. Fair enough; people don't often acknowledge that the mid-twenties are mysterious, elusive years.



(Provided)