Who really wants to live in a universe in which characters make organic choices and adhere to a plausible plot? Audiences who insist on these standards will lose out on a wonderfully satisfying evening during the run of Courtney Meaker’s Chaos Theory (at Annex Theatre April 18-May 17)—in full disclosure, Meaker is a former theatre critic for TheSunBreak.
This play has a lot going for it including an excellent set, by Robin McCartney, but needs better support from director Pamala Milstoy. The broad comic style that establishes major events via instructional guides winked enough on its own without any help from the actors.
Those instructional guides are intended to help Frannie, (Keiko Green), who’s girlfriend, Mack (Jana Hutchison), has left her; Frannie’s not coping well. To get her out of her funk Frannie’s friends, Seth (Drew Highlands) and Bach Evelyn Dehais), give her a book on cosmology. This choice may be more quirky than logical but it moves the plot forward, inadvertently inspiring Frannie to create a machine that will allow her to travel to a different universe in which she and Mack are still together. This works—with the aid of some plutonium from the neighborhood nuclear reactor—but also results in unintended consequences and questions of identity that never quite resolve.
While multiple universes are the topic on hand the unlikely details, such as the book on cosmology, and the casual plutonium hook-up, establish a world that is off-kilter from the get-go. Nonetheless later developments are sufficiently surreal to take us to universes farther beyond the looking glass.
In addition to the high-minded quirkiness the script often traffics in sensationally stupid comedy, which Mijatov’s direction inflates. Highlands as Seth, the straight guy, nails both the high and low humor and keeps us engaged. Dehais overdoes the butch as the transgender Bach. She sounds less masculine than crooner smooth and Guy Smiley announcer slick. This delivery makes the stupid comedy feel strictly cornball without relief from either irony or excessive earnestness.
Green delivers a strong performance as Frannie, finding the tricky balance between playing an annoyingly megalomaniacal character and actually annoying the audience. We never believe in Frannie’s mission but Green helps us want Frannie to succeed, if only in hopes that it will help her move on.
Hutchison also navigates challenging waters in playing an unambiguously obnoxious character (or characters) with whom we come to empathize.
Frannie’s depression gets a light touch. Her friends care and worry but frontload the exasperation. The depression is played for laughs and wins knowing smiles. Yes, the presentation is extreme, but in retrospect any of us who have subjected our friends and family to the moping of our heartbreaks will feel sheepish recognition.
The script is at its most engaging after intermission when the rules of the multi-verse loosen—at least in the minds of the characters—and much comes to rest on questions of identity.
Meaker shifts the audience/performance relationship drawing us into the concerns of the characters by resting our entire understanding of the play on the question the characters must answer. Their search goes from frivolous to effective, but Meaker is wary of copping out with a deus ex machina or a simple twist (a la Sixth Sense or Fight Club). As with the rest of this very real universe of soft-edged gender and orientation this is not a world of either/or, but of multiple possible answers. Meaker suggests the possibilities without committing to any one. In Chaos Theory uncertainty is, for once, both comforting and satisfying.
