Recent Stories with tag her mother was imagination

Annex fields a large, capable cast for "Her Mother Was Imagination." (Photo: Ian Johnston/Annex Theatre)

Her Mother Was Imagination (at Annex Theatre through August 28), the dystopian satire from local playwright Elizabeth Heffron and collaborators Ellie McKay (director), Max Reichlin, and Daniel Worthington, is at war with many things, one of them being my desire to laugh all the way through the play. It's a fitfully entertaining fever dream, never settling on being either satire that leaves a mark, a timely cautionary tale about the world to come, or an affecting allegory about women's restricted choices.

At $15, you're getting more than your money's worth, except in lumbar support. The play stretches to two and a half hours so that it can fit all its targets in--Beck, LDS, eugenics, climate-change deniers, elderly patriarchs, young men who are dicks, whacked-out revolutionary feminists, subservient artists--but as the play progresses, the satirical impulse that fueled its opening number is sapped by earnestness.

From sketchy scene to scene, the energy level varies, and an unwonted sense of profanely dramatic importance grows, as if Will It Blend had tried works by Margaret Atwood and Mamet. Heffron's knack for dragooning historical figures (see Mitzi's Abortion, New Patagonia) into hilariously effective duty hasn't deserted her, but here her imported personages are made mostly of straw.

A raucous opening pageant retells how the prophet Glenn Beck (complete with mythologizing, homespun song, right out of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett") withdrew from public life as a "TV soldier" to the upper reaches of an empty high-rise (the WaMu tower, apparently). Beck's mask is on top of someone's head (none of the press materials notes who plays what role), so that when the actor's head is lowered, Beck's beady-eyed grin comes at you like a battering ram.... (more)