Everything Is Established, by Physical Plant Theatre
by David Glen Robinson

Physical Plant Theater presents Everything is Established in its premiere run at the Off Center, east Austin. The play was written and directed by Hannah Kenah, more familiar in her acting roles, notably with Physical Plant Theater and The Rude Mechanicals. Kenah has given us something bold and creatively uncategorizable; it would be unfair to slap a label on it. Ticket buyers who prefer to create their own labels will agree that the show is outrageously funny, more than reason enough for attending the performance.  

 

The strength of the production is the strong cast, one with immense comedic skills. Lee Eddy plays Sally, a mail-order bride who shows up at a huge mansion in her wedding dress, holding a cooking spatula. The other cast members are both servants of the mansion owner who died before the arrival of his bride. Jeffery Mills is Montgomery, apparently the butler, and Michael Joplin is Plaster, the go-to handyman who does everything except step out-of-doors.  Montgomery and Plaster have had a good old time trashing the mansion since the master died. Then the doorbell rings. Nobody has thought to wave off the bride and notify her of the death of the man who bought her. As they say in the movie industry, mayhem ensues.

 

Why would a man who owns a 1000-room mansion and commands a staff of servants late in his life need to order a mail-order bride? Fukifino. Kenah’s approach is deft enough that the audience never asks itself this obvious question until it's too late. This play is about the three characters on stage who craft their performative material out of the rags and props littering it.  

 

Sally, Montgomery, and Plaster reveal their characters slowly, with no hope or plan of resolution. They also, through voice work, take on multiple characters. Plaster has plenty of face-down-in-the-rags-scenes. And just as we start to know that Plaster would play out his madness to the end, Montgomery is given in narrative text a human life and background, the only character to be so realized. Sally comes from the Montgomery Ward mail-order brides catalog. That’s all she gets by way of background, save for a few references to her mother. Plaster, as his name clues us, comes out of the woodwork. This imbalance in the characters is an exquisite touch in the playwriting; it forces the audience to address the characters differentially, further engaging the spectators' imaginations.  

 

Plays marching into obscure creative territory can well encounter a few bumps along the way. The opening scenes seemed a bit forced and overacted, probably because the audience cannot be expected to comprehend the odd initial actions as extreme character traits made explicable only much later. And the violence that popped out at odd moments was a bit too much, rousing the audience into verbalized ouches and oofs. One suspects that those scenes were stress-relieving for the actors. Elsewhere the strong physical comedy was thoroughly satisfying. 

 

Despite this, the play is anything but cartoon characters on a romp. Everything is Established is much closer to a Eugene-Ionesco-exercise for the 21^st century. But while Ionesco’s absurdism, linked to surrealism in the visual arts, was wall-to-wall, leaving the world and reality and audiences with nothing, Kenah’s absurdism is interrupted by high comedy and memorable imagery. Most notable in this regard is the scene when Montgomery and Sally take a pleasant stroll outdoors while Plaster watches them in shuddering fear, a hulk of loathsomeness.

 

Mature adults of all ages will mightily enjoy Everything is Established. The play runs until February 21 at The Off Center in east Austin. 

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Everything is Established
by Hannah Kenah
Physical Plant Theatre

February 6 – February 21, 2015

Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m.

Tickets $12-$25 on-line at the website or at the door