Rep's "K of D" is Just O.K., But Renata Friedman K.O.'s

Renata Friedman in K of D, an urban legend (Photo: Chris Bennion)

The K of D, an urban legend (at Seattle Rep's Leo K. Theatre through February 20) plays a bit like a watered down Stand by Me for a new generation. Playwright Laura Schellhardt is quoted in the program saying, "I'm interested in fear in the theatre and if it's even possible to have a creepy story in the theatre anymore--it's easier on film."

But K of D never quite crosses the boundary into genuine goosebumpery, and to the extent that it tries and doesn't quite succeed to impress you with its Faulknerian mood, or even surprise with its ending, it's a gawky thing to watch. 

For most of the first act, the play tries to come across as brooding and complex, but really you feel a fervent desire for it to come to the point, as if the playwright is making you sit through the search for a story to develop. It's much better at evoking a gang of kids hanging around, trying to make sense of things they only half-understand by telling stories and having their friend elaborate or shoot their theories down. It's childhood as the Iowa Writers Workshop, except here the setting is St. Marys, Ohio, and all the children are played by a single, formidable actor, Renata Friedman.

Braden Abraham and L.B. Morse have created a breathtaking, American gothic set: a half-rotted, decrepit dock on a lake, backed by tall grasses and a taller night sky--it's so strongly suggestive of place that when Friedman steps off the dock onto the black, reflective floor of the theatre, you're convinced she's going to plunge into the black water. Sound designer Matt Starritt unleashes a tour de force of sonic environmental cues, everything from half-heard shouts in the evening and dogs barking, to a heron's wings and a lid tightening on a jar, with lighting designer Robert Aguilar carving out moments in 3-D. 

While I'm still waiting for Renata Friedman to get the adult role she deserves, her performance is what makes the evening memorable. You may have seen her as the deranged feminist stalker in ACT's Female of the Species, or the ingènue in The Doctor In Spite of Himself, seemingly assembled from pipestems. She tends to fall back on a "funny" voice, a slightly precious, breathy nasal tone that careers between squeak and alto, but here, with so many voices to do, that's not an option. 

She may be better at character-painting, in fact, than Schellhardt, who gives the narrator a small-town proclivity to "ain't"s and "don't" for "doesn't," while also writing more semantically complex, poetic descriptions for her. This vocal disintegration of a single character, when there are 16, is troublesome (intentional, not intentional?), but then Schellhardt has not one but two characters mispronounce words for comic effect throughout the whole play, which, unless you're writing a role for Norm Crosby, is two too many. This indulgence isn't fatal, it just injects a workshop vibe into what otherwise (set, sound, cast) feels like a polished production. 

It is also true that Schellhardt has a good ear for colloquial expression, which she deploys to great effect. This, in addition to the risks she takes in having kids act like real kids, amused and entertained by the things kids accept from each other, gives the play's characters weight, solidity, and place. In retrospect, you imagine them in your mind's eye, instead of Friedman, which also says something good about Braden Abraham's direction. His work, and that of the creative team, makes this a two-person play, really, in that Friedman is always participating, deeply as Proust, in the remembered reality around her. 

I just wish the story added up to more than it does, flirting a bit with murder, mystery, child abuse, and even pedophilia, but not quite knowing why it needed to be told. Because of the number of characters, sometimes productions have cast multiple actors; here, with Friedman solo, she becomes the voice of splintered, incomplete identities in a way that mirrors childhood with post-traumatic dissociation, so that you see how certain memories can disassemble the self you've created.

The way Friedman plays it, there are brief moments--the light (courtesy Aguilar) catches her face uncontorted--when there's an apparition of the person "who has taken it all in," who exists precisely in doing that. That's a different ghost story, though.