Ruined

Even in the worst of circumstances, people manage to carve out something that looks like merriment. In Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Ruined, one watering hole and brothel is the purportedly carefree backdrop for a steely-eyed look into the exceptional barbarity of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For this challenging production, Plowshares Theatre Company moves to the downtown Detroit Boll Family YMCA, where director Gary Anderson lets these truth-inspired accounts of atrocity against civilian women carry their own significant weight.

Most of the play is confined to a small DRC social establishment, catering to the local miners’ intoxicant and carnal needs. Scenic design by John Manfredi imagines a festive, if slipshod, open-air edifice whose ambience doesn’t appear to be its primary draw. Cheaply furnished, with strings of lights stretched over the bar and a small platform for live music, the modest arrangement is just hospitable enough to bring in the men for a few rounds before enjoying some paid companionship; it’s an oasis without the kind of ostentation that courts trouble. The place is run by Mama Nati (Iris M. Farrugia), a salty proprietor and shrewd businesswoman who fights to keep political allegiances outside her walls — after all, everyone’s money spends the same. She prides herself in securing bright luxuries, conjured by properties designer Jennifer Maiseloff: inaccessible beer, cigarettes, and other delicacies. However, at the play’s start, Mama’s clumsily flirtatious supplier Christian (Augustus Williamson) also brings her a pair of young women in need of shelter and protection, with nowhere else to turn.

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Southwest Story

To begin its landmark twentieth anniversary season, Matrix Theatre Company revives one of its first original productions: 1995’s Southwest Story. This contemporary take on the Romeo and Juliet story pays homage to its most famous predecessors, both Shakespeare’s text and the New York youth of West Side Story; however, the text is not just a translation of an old play to a contemporary setting, but a true adaptation in its own right. As directed by Mona Lucius, this production (staged at the Boll Family Theatre within the downtown Detroit YMCA) threads present-day issues through the timeless relatability of illicit young love, in an enlightening and easily relatable tale.

Here, we lay our scene in fair Southwest Detroit, at a busy intersection that puts the Nuñez family’s corner market and liquor store in opposition with Reverend Turner’s neighborhood church. In close keeping with the beats of the Shakespeare text, the opening scenes introduce the viewer to young Cristina Nuñez (Maria Romo) and Andrae Turner (Damon Whitman), then introduces them to each other when Andrae and his friends crash Cristina’s quinceañera (the Latino predecessor to the sweet sixteen party). The young lovers are beset by obstacles — manifest in Cristina’s cousin, Tomas (Justino Solis), who carries the parents’ feud with him into the younger generation — but also find allies — in particular, wise but insouciant Nicky (Monique Coleman) and Sister Rice (Rubelhia Aleman), a groovy old hippie with a catalog of quirks. The fifteen-year-old script (which was collaboratively penned by Wes Nethercott and a large group of students) has now seen some obvious updates, introducing Facebook and cell phones in thoughtful ways that thoroughly complement the storytelling.

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Unlocking Desire

Tennessee Williams did right by his treatment of Blanche DuBois, the tragic heroine of A Streetcar Named Desire; the classic play uses nuance and inference to delicately trace (here be spoilers!) a used and broken woman’s final spiral into insanity. Now, playwright Barbara Neri seeks to revisit the character and possibly offer release in Unlocking Desire, taking those dearly extracted private truths and tossing them into the primordial soup of troubles of a mental institution. Yet at the same time, Neri seems so gun-shy to take the character in an unsanctioned direction that poor Blanche can go nowhere at all; in actuality, this Khoros Inc. production (performed at the Marlene Boll Theatre within the downtown Detroit YMCA, with direction by John Jakary) prefers exclusively to exorcise old demons in new surroundings.

The play’s premise imagines the next steps for Blanche (Linda Rabin Hammell), who was at last writing being escorted away to the booby hatch. (Although a basic familiarity with Williams’s original text — not the 1951 film, there are key differences — couldn’t hurt, the script’s overwhelming repetition of the critical plot points should get even the most unversed viewer on track.) Upon her arrival, the newest patient is introduced to a half-dozen institutionalized personalities that can all conveniently be used to reflect on the protagonist in some way. It’s very Blanche Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, especially in us-versus-them group scenes of mild to moderate rebellion. In the interest of academic discourse, each character is reduced to a cheat sheet of useful opposing convictions, rendering conversations about love and desire into so many core values being nakedly wielded at each other, with little import assigned to who originated them. However blatant, the main tenets and arguments are certainly intelligent and thought-provoking, and most every beat swells with deeper meaning.

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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

As far as classic American theater goes, the deservedly canonized Cat on a Hot Tin Roof sells itself. Matrix Theatre cofounder Wes Nethercott directs this production of Tennessee Williams's iconic play, for which Matrix has taken up residence at the YMCA Boll Family Theatre in downtown Detroit. The larger venue boasts stadium seating for excellent visibility, and allows set designer Eric W. Maher more space and options for his Southern plantation bedroom and adjacent breezeway. The set is a livable blend of well-worn comfort and opulence, which properties designer Stella Woitulewicz fills with lovely period incidentals and a few gallons of amber liquor. Given the literal feel of the backdrop, this faithful, grounded production concurrently presents an honest examination of the difficulty of adult family relationships, the pitfalls of longevity and legacy, and the terror of facing one's frankly disappointing, unrecognizable life.

The pinnacle of the production is its second act (of three), the blistering confrontation of Maher as worthless drunk Brick and Alan Madlane as Big Daddy Pollitt. A heretofore sidestepped conflict between father and son is dragged out into the open, allowing each to freshly wound the other as they clumsily vie to understand and be understood. Nethercott shows incredible comfort with Williams's talky dialogue, delicately guiding the long ebbs and flows of the conversation for maximum effect without maximum drama. Much of the act is surrounded by deliberate silence, with few interruptions to act as a salve; however, incidental voices and lights by Randall Mauck work in tandem to simulate an act-closing fireworks show to rival the one happening inside the house. Madlane and Maher are well matched, using their familial closeness as weapons as they dispense with niceties and claw into the scandalous truth behind Brick's career failures, chronic laissez-faire, and epic alcoholism.

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Patty Hearst: The New Musical

Writer, composer, and director Barton Bund has me convinced: the story of Patty Hearst is best told as a musical. The genre adds passion and energy to a grisly, infamous tale, without a whisper of camp. A song is the perfect vehicle for allowing characters to expound on their fiercely lionized radical convictions — of which there is no shortage in the Symbionese Liberation Army. Musicals are also given a pass for shallow or incomplete plot points, which Bund capitalizes upon by gently sidestepping the most dangerous and controversial aspects of Hearst's initial confinement. Nevertheless, the Blackbird Theatre's production of Patty Hearst: The New Musical is miles away from safe, challenging the viewer to look with fresh eyes at this story of a kidnapped heiress reborn as an urban guerilla.

The titular Patty (Jamie Weeder) is central to the proceedings, but is neither antihero nor protagonist. More often than not, the perspective is utterly neutral: Bund is careful not to take sides, sticking close to his source material of video and audio tapes and a handful of contradictory testimonies. This is not to say that the production is clinical or dry in tone; rather, the actors infuse their characters with urgency and purpose but leave their true motives to interpretation, leaving the bulk of the analysis to the viewer. Patty's first-act evolution — when she speaks or sings, or, even more telling, when she doesn't — is both bold and effective, and also allows the SLA characters ample space to develop as individuals. With no one to actively root for, the prevailing sense is that of careful observation as the events unfold, in a vain attempt to better understand them. (The viewer may benefit from reviewing the facts of the Hearst case, which are faithfully adhered to; knowing the story in advance allows one to focus on the performances.)

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