Like Lars Van Trier’s visit to turn-of-the-century, small-town America on the big-screen in Dogville, director Adam Roebuck’s renders Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology on the small stage with a sparse set and a cast clad in the all-black inconspicuous getup of stagehands. Roebuck presents a performance sans crutches to be judged only on the performances.
The play unfolds through a series of loosely linked monologues, and we are meant to feel as though we are onlookers at a wake, listening to the unsung stories of these nearly 100 townsfolk, from the sultry millineress to the put-upon novelist. No doubt, these would be challenges for any ensemble, however, in this case, it is perhaps too much of an AP course for what, at times, feels like an inchoate high school production. Like the cloying, over-sung auditions of American Idol wanna-bes, too many of these actors have not yet honed their craft, revealing a lack of range that flat-lines the production into a monotone drone of the same character, different name, each desperately begging for our attention in the same melodramatic whine.
However, of the 18, two do stand out. Over a head above the rest, striking Aussie Kane Manera moves between the severity of a dead war hero to the playfulness of a child; and likewise, Tom Baran offers up much-needed comic relief at this otherwise dour undertaking. Like uplifting rays of sunlight peeking out behind gray rain clouds, these two outshine a cast that is otherwise as memorable as the stagehands they are dressed as.
