UDM Theatre Closes 41st Season With A 'Road Trip'
By John Quinn, EncoreMichigan
The UDM Theatre Company closes its 41st season with a departure from the norm. Neil LaBute's "Autobahn" is a collaborative effort that includes the University of Detroit Mercy's architecture program and digital media design students in its design and execution. Rather that performing in their usual home at the Marygrove Theatre, the show is mounted in the exhibition space of the Loranger Architecture building on the campus of UDM. The sparse, industrial feel is part theater, part art installation. It is a suitable edgy environment for a distinctively edgy play.
"Autobahn" comprises five playlets, all set in the front seats of automobiles. Playwright LaBute told The New York Times, "It could be a really intimate space, or it could be somewhere you felt trapped. The conversation can be as difficult to negotiate as the road. There's more potholes and no AAA in sight." In keeping with the UDM approach towards education in theater, directors David L. Regal and Andrew Huff have cast both students and associate guest artists and let the synergy percolate.
"Funny" finds associate guest artist Karen Minard and Charky Mushatt portraying a taciturn mother and motormouthed daughter on the way home from rehab. Sometimes, honesty is not the best policy. In "Bench Seat," Chris Jakob takes girlfriend Michelle Renaud to the local lovers' lane where, we find, couples go either to make out or break up. Whatever our hero's original intent, it is stifled when his girl is revealed as a ticking time bomb of paranoia. "Merge" features associate guest artist Brak Little as a semantics-obsessed husband trying to coax out the real story of his wife's (Karen Minard) convention trip.
"Road Trip" is the most disturbing vignette, as a high school driving instructor (associate guest artist Joel Frazee) drives off with a student (Autumn Thiellesen). It is increasingly obvious his intentions are not good. "Autobahn" closes the eponymous work, a monologue by a wife in denial about the breakup of their foster home, using her increasingly uncomfortable husband as her sounding board. Associate guest artist Crystal Reign Brock joins Brak Little to portray a character who will repeat her story until she believes it.
The Theatre Company has successfully turned out solid work from a less-than-stellar script. LaBute tosses his audience into the middle of conversations, forcing them to find context on their own. While the convention is deliberately unsettling, what would have had sharp impact in smaller doses soon becomes stale. But his structure is overshadowed by his philosophy; the playwright seems cynical towards his characters' inability to communicate honestly. We observe them, but don't engage.
Monologue and dialogue are, by nature, rather static theater. The settings in "Autobahn" compound the problem by limiting the actors to voice and gesture, but not movement. A different team of digital media designers has created a background of images projected on innovative surfaces for each playlet. When they evoke the sense of motion that the staging cannot provide, they are very effective. Though at times acting and visuals that might have been designed in sync are not, the overall effect is not diminished.
As the fine arts struggle to find a niche in an increasingly vulgar culture, we can take heart the UDM Theatre Company is thinking outside the box – or outside the proscenium – and challenging students to take theater into unconventional venues. That's an exciting road trip if ever there was one.
For tickets and showtimes, visit EncoreMichigan.com.
John Quinn reviews local theater productions for www.EncoreMichigan.com, the state's most comprehensive resource for news and information about Michigan's professional theaters. Follow them on Facebook @EncoreMichigan.com.
