Williamstown Theatre Festival has hit another home run with their world premiere WTF commission of the semi-autobiographical we are continuous by Harrison David Rivers.
When looking for the villain in a dramatic piece, it’s a pretty safe bet that it’s the guy who reacts badly to their child switching their major to Theater. That would be Hoyt, the unseen father, who also prays an inordinate time before breakfast when meeting your partner, and digs a gas line for a living.
The play is powerfully focused on the relationship between mother, Ora (Brenda Pressley), and son, Simon(Leland Fowler). In alternating direct address speeches to the audience, they tell of their bond with a couple of stories about theater. He tells about how his mother always supported his interest in theater and even made his costumes, once with an outfit so outrageous for his appearance as Ali Hakim that he got entrance applause. When he was cast as Atticus Finch in high school and his classmates hissed at him in the hall “You’re going to ruin the book”, his mother went to bat for him and dressed down the principal, the drama department and the school board.
They are so close they even borrow one another’s language. In what they describe as a bit, or a comic routine replayed forever, she will ask what his secret is, and he responds “I love you.” And he will ask her, and she will respond in kind, and he will say “That’s no secret!”
What also isn’t a secret is that Simon is gay, and he comes out to his parents.
Their living rooms are presented side by side onstage, in beautiful realistic detail, set design by dots, stunning lighting by Amith Chandrashaker. Once Simon leaves for college, the play leapfrogs in time as Simon’s future husband Abe (Tom Holcomb) breaks the fourth wall and enters from the wings. The set will shift, recede and raise its backstage curtain revealing the theater’s walls as time and space hurtle on and back in the story. He catches us up on his first date with Simon and moving in together after 3 months “which is like 5 years in gay time.” He is a delightful, sexy and charming guy and we couldn’t be happier for future Simon although it wasn’t easy to get where he’s been.
Director Tyler Thomas does intriguing things with the placement of characters and set, keeping us constantly engaged but never distracted in a play that is all storytelling. There is more action in this play than any direct address piece you’ve ever seen.
Simon tells of his parents missing the RSVP deadline on his wedding and his follow-up call with his father’s response, and his father’s starting a Christian group in Kansas for men who have committed homosexual acts. There’s more.
Leland Fowler, who was so great in Dorset’s Queen of the Night last summer dealing with his father in a two-hander staged outdoors, is terrific in this. His bright, lovely decency makes you feel for him as obstacles are thrown in his way. Perhaps, he gained all his strength from his mother’s secret.
Through it all, Brenda Pressley as the mother recedes somewhat in the play as Simon’s relations with Abe and Hoyt get more attention. After such a strong nurturing beginning, she reasserts herself at a critical moment for her son as she delivers the earth-shaking command at the climax of the play which will devastate you and compel you to your feet.
With your face streaked with tears and your hands raw from applause, Williamstown Theatre Festival reminds you why they have always mattered.
we are continuous is a galvanizing testament to love in all its forms that will lift you up and make you cheer.
Through 8/14 @ Williamstown Theatre Festival
Tickets: www.wtfestival.org or 413-458-3253
"Love" - Google News
August 07, 2022 at 08:00PM
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WTF's "we are continuous" Celebrates Love as Salvation - Nippertown
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