Review #1 of 2: Jenna & the Whale by Ground Floor Theatre
by David Glen Robinson

Stories of a single complicated life achieve complexity when they intersect  thecomplicated lives of a whole community. Any absurd story with these qualities takes on the immensity of the ocean and marine life large enough to swallow one’s own. This summer of 2023 with its excessive heat and many reports of shark attacks humbles us with its oceanic immensity. The vastness bears down on us, creates pain in us, and changes us. This may be the perfect preparation for the deep lessons of life and spirit of Jenna and the Whale.

 

The premise is that a surfer, Jenna, played by Kelsey Mazak, falls off her surfboard when it's Victory at Sea (high waves, dangerous surfing weather). She's swallowed by a whale. within the whale she meets another person, she thinks, who introduces himself as Jonah, played by Matthew Vo. On land in Dunes Beach, Florida he'd been known as Patrick. The community searches desperately for Jenna by sea, by air, and by beach patrols. One family, that of Patrick (Tonie Knight as his mother Rita, and Keaton Patterson as his sister Coco) is forced to relive the nightmare of their similar search, futile, three years earlier. Patrick’s mother knows that Patrick committed suicide. Sister Coco refuses to believe it.

 

The drama could not be more intense. But don’t even begin to think that the play is a simple-minded ghost story.

 

The play on the Bible story of Jonah and the whale is obvious and deliberate, but it serves as an updating and launching pad for themes that go off in many directions. The choice of that story seems a bit perverse, for it has driven more people from faith in Judaism and Christianity than it has gained. Jonah was regurgitated on the coast of Nineveh. Really? Nineveh, then as now, sits in the middle of the Mesopotamian Desert. The tale smacks of a myth borrowed for effect from a non-Hebraic tradition (adjust text to the coast of Tyre). But how many Sunday School teachers have tried to teach metaphor to five-year-olds on that one?

 

 

The key to the brilliance of that choice by playwrights Vanessa Garcia and Jake Cline is that the core myth is part of the intellectual and spiritual tradition shared by all the characters and probably everyone in the audience at Ground Floor Theatre. Here is keen mutual identification of the characters, actors, and audience in the co-creation of an important work of performing art. Few new works make such deeply connecting preparations.

 

Yes, Jenna and the Whale is a work of runaway magical realism. The play swallows the fantastic to deal with the inescapably fraught human condition, suicide variety. And don’t forget love, transcendent love. How could the playwrights have done otherwise?

 

Such plays place extraordinary demands on production. What? We gotta have a whale? Call Connor Hopkins. What do the insides of a whale look like? And what about those whale songs? Call Lowell Bartholomee. We need a beachside trinket shop? Get Allison Kemmerer right away. What’s this about special effects? Get Jacqueline Sindelar, Connor Hopkins, Lowell Bartholomee, and Pam Fletcher Friday into my office right now. That ought to do it. And how!

 

One great virtue of Ground Floor Theatre’s production is the exceptionally strong casting. Tonie Knight as Rita, mother of Patrick and Coco, went boom! and delivered the play’s unifying and clarifying monologue on the hurricane of emotions that blow through a family member of a suicide. Suicide was the central theme of the play, and although the play’s complexity continued to unfold after Rita's monologue, it was a long, lazy swim to resolution. Knight’s perfr\ormance was enriched by the  playwrights' research into the nature of the drive toward suicide and the human wreckage it leaves behind. The production was a surprisingly advanced psychological riff on suicide and its effects, which are found more behind the Tiki Empire Surf Shack on Dunes Beach than in the belly of that magic whale.

 

The pinnacle of Lisa Scheps’ subtle but forthright directing is Knight’s monologue. As the emotional scale of Knight’s voice rose, she slowly stepped along a diagonal until she stood downstage face to face with the audience. The impact of her lasting bereavement shook the audience. Kudos to Knight and Lisa Scheps.

 

As Jenna's motther, Jennifer Jennings has enormous stage presence. One simply cannot take one’s eyes off her or fail to feel the energetic vibe that the talented have but which cannot be taught. Never selfish, Jennings builds up the characters around her, strengthening the story, its progress, and its performance. She made clear her intent to save and protect her daughter. In such a fantastic story, such authenticity is grounding.

 

Keaton Patterson is a talented young actor emerging from the pandemic. She played Rita's foul-mouthed grown daughter Coco, Patrick's sister. Clearly an exemplar of Gen Z, she found new and creative ways to explode f-bombs in emotional states from low to high. Behaviorally, too, she was uncontrollable and unpredictable. She and the rescued, disoriented Jenna kept the play driving forward and the audience engaged.

 

Brooke Ashley Eden is another comeback star who specializes in tasty character roles. in Jenna they're Deputy Tyler. They She kept the play partially in reality, continually showing up to ask plot-explaining questions of the who-what-where kind. Okay, it was a device, but Eden (through the playwrights) colored their character by being behind the times and taking stage time to get iPhone advice from Coco. That is so up to date. Otherwise, Brooke's fumbling was not quite Barney Fife, thank God, and they showed great skill slapping cuffs on an arrestee and knowing exactly when to make that arrest. Singing skills came greatly to the fore when the play took its literary and biblical turns.

 

Kelsey Mazak and Matthew Vo, companions in cetacean gastronomy, played well off each other in the absurd fantasy situation which opened the play. Vo, as Jonah/Patrick is a fresh, emerging actor who can play a wide range of emotions and make such circumstances credible. He's an excellent choice. Kelsey Mazak as Jenna has arrived at the starring actor status after many outstanding roles in Austin theatre. In each, she has brought full commitment to the production. She, like Vo, made us believe fully the setting in the belly of the whale, assisted mightily by Bartholomee’s sound and video design. The whale interior became a liminal state, a place of uncertainty. It was significant that Jenna struggled to go on, but Jonah held back.

 

 

 

The net we initially see Jonah working on becomes a symbol of various significance throughout the play variously, including as a web embracing all life. Its most heart-touching appearance was as a screen dropping from above toserve as a photo booth screen. That screen captured projected scenes of of Jennings and Mazek engaged in deeply felt mother-daughter reconciliation and healing. In the opening-night performance, the screen dropped only partially, suspended in a crinkled, bent look which distorted their faces. But that netlike embrace was also symbolic, and heartening.

 

Jenna and the Whale is a co-production of Ground Floor Theatre and Broadway United, an organization that ithe program notes “is committed to developing and promoting the work of artists from equitable racial and ethnic backgrounds.” The Broadway United commitment dovetails with Ground Floor Theatre’s missioon of working with and providing opportunities for underserved and underrepresented communities. Broadway United has workshopped Jenna and the Whale at various venues around the country. Ground Floor Theatre’s production, perhaps the first full-scale presentation of the play, might help boost it to a bright future.

 

Jenna and the Whale is of interest to all thoughtful, imaginative adults. Some language is not appropriate for children. The production runs until August 26th at Ground Floor Theatre on Austin's east side.

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Jenna & the Whale
by Vanessa Garcia, Jake Cline
Ground Floor Theatre

August 10 - 26, 2023

Ground Floor Theatre, Austin

 

 

[poster design by Shannon Grounds]