Low-Income Laughs Fuel On the Nature of Dust at NCTC

Brenda Joyner and Amy Thone in NCTC's "On the Nature of Dust." Photo: Chris Bennion

Though it's a comedy about the mother-daughter bond--albeit one that also provokes audible sniffling--On the Nature of Dust (through May 30 at ACT's Falls Theatre, tickets $10-$25) will never be confused with the chick-lit fare that features earnest joy luck clubs or no-shit-taking ya-ya sisterhoods. It's most hilarious moments have the feel of hidden family-photo-album candids. Still, it celebrates a central mystery (acknowledging, then breaking that bond) in a way that many--if not most--men may only guess at the depth of.

From the moment that the lights come up on Amy Thone, sprawled out at the breakfast table in a too-short denim skirt, the play is owned by her character, Shirley Bliss, a hard-living, man-chasing, unfit excuse for a mom. Sure, we can laugh about it in retrospect, but she's the kind of woman you give a wide berth to in the supermarket. She is the challenge playwright Stephanie Timm has set herself. You've heard of an antihero. Meet the anti-mom.

If Shirley gets a hard-won education in motherhood, just as her baby Clara (Brenda Joyner) is about to leave the nest, Thone, Timm, and director Kathleen Collins are careful not to sand her rough edges smooth. Her language and parenting advice--while uproarious--are recommended for those 16 and above. (Her explanation for why she smells the way she does exiting the bedroom may not have an upper or lower bound.) 

Etta Lilienthal's scenic design for Shirley's apartment smacks you upside the head with the social stratum suggested by a plush burgundy couch, a plastic wood-grain breakfast table, and floral-patterned vinyl chairs (the ones with the metal frame and trapezoidal backs), all on a carpet of AstroTurf. (The impossible-but-true AstroTurf really sends me.)

Brenda Joyner and Benjamin Harris in NCTC's "On the Nature of Dust." Photo: Chris Bennion

Borrowing from what is now absurdist tradition (and a penchant of her own), Timm has over-achieving, compulsively organized Clara turn into a chimpanzee following a church-utility-closet groping spree with Bernie Wells (Benjamin Harris).

Oddly, the chimpanzee scenes are not all that funny--at least in comparison to the rest of the show.

Once Clara starts devolving, the play is all Thone's--and Harris's. Harris is that lanky, gawky, blurting and grunting ur-teenager that typifies the actual variety (or used to, prior to Michael Cera). Harris is never smarter than his character, never peeks out behind Bernie's goofball incomprehension. Shirley, adrift without her daughter's mothering, at first tries to find a way to restore Clara, and gradually settles on trying to create the environment she needs.

Michael Patten and Betsy Schwartz in NCTS's "On the Nature of Dust." Photo: Chris Bennion

Meanwhile, Pastor Ken Sample (Michael Patten, wearing a basset-hound expression) and evolution-evangelizing biology teacher Vivian Thurston-Baer (Betsy Schwartz) keep having run-ins that are awkward and sniping, but serve no particular dramatic purpose.

That is, I can't say I bought Timm's effort to yoke her story of a chick leaving the nest to the antagonism between...whom? Evolutionists and fundamentalists? Science and faith in general? But director Collins keeps the spat entertaining, at least. 

Shirley turns to both for advice, but Timm doesn't let them walk and breathe and careen, the way Shirley does. They've been cast in the unfortunate role of social polarities. (Patten gets a break-out scene near the end, but Schwartz was given nothing to ground her character's reversal in.) Though things settle into a "lesson learned" patness near the end--there's even a ceremony to mark the educational moment--the emotional reality that Thone, Joyner, and Harris bring to their roles have set a mood that isn't dispersed so easily.