Autobahn

Celebrating a new space with a bold new collaboration, UDM Theatre Company ushers in the Michigan premiere of Neil LaBute’s Autobahn with a space-age concept. Jointly directed by David L. Regal and Andrew Huff, this automotive production captures the unique tension of the isolated driver-passenger conversation with disquieting humor and an intriguing visual palette.

The theatre’s move to a cavernous room within the University of Detroit Mercy’s architecture building marks a joint venture of the company and the departments of architecture and digital media studies, and it shows in striking surroundings. Physical representations of three different front seats are credited to Melinda Pacha; as lit by Mark Choinski, the tableaux floating pristinely in negative space are as Spartan and judicious as modern art installations. Digital media director Claudia Bernasconi oversees the work of more than a dozen designers, who give new meaning to the concept of rear projection by presenting ambient literal and figurative imagery in the space behind the travelers. Although there may be a brief acclimation period during which the viewer learns to pay attention to the scene before the changing landscape, the visuals’ persistent meandering monotony evokes the very kind of endless road weariness that drives the play’s premise: when people have been sitting in a car as long as this, the only thing left to do is have it out.

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Eleemosynary

No matter how inquisitive, no matter how intellgent, no matter how pioneering a person is, this is no guarantee of success when it comes to dealing with one’s family. In Lee Blessing’s Eleemosynary, three generations of superior discourse and familial discord come into play, a triptych of fraught mother/daughter relationships and a vast inherited intelligence that isn’t enough to bind them. Yet in an honest look at human victories and shortcomings together, director Yasmin Jeffries finds plenty to smile about amid the tense and lonely landscape of this ambitious UDM Theatre Company drama.

Structurally, the story is told out of order, weaving back through several timelines at once in a sly and intelligent narrative, but chronologically, it begins with family matriarch Dorothea (Stephanie Nichols). In the true present of the play, the grandmother is comatose after suffering a stroke, but not even this can suppress her impulses to provide commentary and impart all her knowledge and recollections to anyone within range. Her adult life is defined by an eccentricity she wears like a crown, allowing her to pursue metaphysically complex research problems and keep out from under the thumb of the men who would otherwise make decisions for her. In the role, Nichols easily communicates the true wonder and vigor that propel Dorothea always to learn and teach — so fervently that she cannot see how her own dominant will is fostering similar instincts for escape in her own daughter.

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The Tempest

UDM Theatre Company comes full circle with its landmark 40th-anniversary show: The Tempest, in addition to reaching the 400-year milestone in 2011, was the university program's first-ever production. For a script that feels like an ending as well as a beginning, this staging (directed by Andrew Huff) rides a current of youthful exuberance, its best moments found in the playfulness of playing Shakespeare.

Huff's self-aware, make-do concept isn't itself novel, but its introduction via a clever prologue establishes the tone with incredible efficiency. Dr. Arthur J. Beer, faculty member and the production's Prospero, leads the cast in a table read of the initial shipwreck scene. His few remarks, cuts and staging notes, are subsequently implemented in the same scene replayed, using Melinda Pacha's piecemeal set and Mark Choinski's richly hued lights in tandem to make a low-budget yet effective version of the spectacle. This is what we have to work with, the device says, and this is how we'll tell this story. With a complete framework accomplished in minutes, the rest of the production is free to explore theatrical work-arounds that cleverly honor and subvert the play's fantastical elements, giving dialogue and relationship top billing over magic intervention.

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