At ten dollars a ticket, Taffety Punk’s The Car Plays, a triptych of short works that take place on the road, is the equivalent of two-dollar-a-gallon gasoline — so affordable you can’t pass it up and it’ll take you just as far as the overpriced stuff. With just a few chairs, some choice sound effects and a half-dozen engaging performances, The Car Plays eschew price-raising bells and whistles in order to connect directly with the story-appreciation centers in the brain.
Opener Buggy & Tyler — a new script written for this production by local playwright Gwydion Suilebhan and directed by Joel David Santner — is sort of a National Lampoon road movie as tailored for the stage, which means it’s much weirder, funnier and more honest. It concerns two mismatched college friends, prissy Tyler (Jason Lott) and cheerful dude Buggy (Eric Messner). On their way back to school, improbably, from Burning Man, they find their separate opinions on what to do when they get lost bring up their separate attitudes on where they want to go in life.
Nebraska by Noon is the heavyweight of the trio. In the near-silent opening moment, we see a mother pack her young daughter and teenaged son in the car; the daughter’s arm is broken and the mother feels the need to pat the son down for contraband, and already we know that this ain’t just some trip to Disneyland. If not for the subtlety and natural pacing of Briandaniel Oglesby’s script and Sonya Robbins’ direction, this sad, unsettling story could have become oppressive. But as it is, the play keeps you guessing without being coy, and makes the characters sympathetic without compromising their flaws. The actors all deserve great credit — Sheila Hennessey as the grown-up doing her damndest to stay grown up in the face of horrible choices; Alex Vaughn as the son, committing completely to the most difficult material; and Sylvie Ashford, essaying a believable portrayal that would be worthy of praise even if she weren’t “just” a young performer.
Lastly, just when you might have thought you’ve gotten more than the share of comedy and drama than you might usually have gotten for a $40 ticket, there comes Thomas Michael Campbell’s hilarious reality-warper dREAMtRIPPIN’, directed by Kelsey Mesa. Two co-workers, Karen (Esther Williamson) and Steven (Mark Krawczyk) are on their way to an out-of-town conference. Beyond that, it’s hard to know what’s fact and what’s Freudian, as one or both of the characters snap into and out of car-naps, having dreams about all the awkward ways they could interact over the course of the trip. Each dream-ending moment, with a jolt of light and the character snapping awake, is funnier and more poignant than the last.
Theatre of this unpretentious quality should be the minimum standard we all seek. As dramatic entertainment that’s not looking to change the world so much as be worthy of your dollars and minutes, it’s hard to beat The Car Plays.
The Car Plays runs through April 23 at Taffety Punk in the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. Tickets are available online.
