Feeling a little spacey? Tales of the Lost Formicans, the Drama Department's latest production, begins with Jerry (Charlie Semine) lying on the floor and gazing up at glow-in-the-dark stars, comets, and planets... as well as peering aside voyeuristically at the audience members. As strange as it may be, his behavior is forgivable because, for the next couple of hours, you have the privilege of an in-depth view of the quirky lives of a handful of characters.
Written by Constance Congdon, the play has an unsubtle autobiographical tilt. Just like the main character, Cathy, Congdon watched as her marriage disintegrated, her difficult teenage son grew up in an increasingly valueless society, and her father slowly faded into the fog of Alzheimer's disease. In the play, however, a group of aliens work like archaeologists to decipher the reason why humans act like humans - why they take for granted what they do.
Tales of the Lost Formicans won the Newsday/Oppenheimer Award for the best new play produced in New York City in 1990. Over a decade later, director Barbara Grossman said that "the issues [the play] is grappling with are still timely. As a woman with aging parents, I can relate to Cathy.
"You know what hit me last night when I went home after rehearsal?" she continued. "I looked at this abstract painting in my den - it's been there for years. But I realized that this play is like an abstract painting - it's evocative, suggestive, and in its own way, profoundly moving."
Don't mistake this for being a sci-fi alien story, though - playwright Constance Congdon's themes are entirely human and recognizable. The aliens act in various capacities - as commentators, anthropologists, narrators, thieves, and, tying these roles together, as comic relief. This is not to say that the human characters aren't topically humorous as well. Jerry's conspiracy theories are initially laughable and then eerie in their truth.
Some of Eric's (Graham Griffin) character traits can be found in nearly any teenager, and his penchant for a particular four-letter word puts a comic spin on adolescent angst. Granted, he has reason to be unhappy - his father cheated on his mother with an 18-year-old student, and the resulting divorce transplanted the freshly truncated and hurting family to Colorado. The result for Eric is his abrasive treatment of Mom, long-distance phone bills totaling a couple hundred dollars, and his eventual flight away from home.
All plot lines eventually lead to mom, daughter, and friend Cathy (Sarah
Kauderer). Her father Jim, touchingly and convincingly played by Josh Bauml, is reason enough to ground this play in earthly frustrations, pain, and loss. As Jim's Alzheimer's progresses, both Cathy and his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Russell) struggle by fighting, crying, and losing pieces of their sanity as they try to cope with yet another frayed strand of their fragile family.
Cathy's anger is reserved not only for her son, as evidenced by one tautly planned and performed scene with Evelyn, in which an argument is yelled in cacophony as occasional lines arrive from different places in synchrony for compounded effect. Judy (Lauren D'Avella), while attempting to alleviate her own loneliness and single status, tries to support her longtime friend Cathy, but at times ends up putting her in trouble instead. David Hartnagel lends his voice to the alien announcer, as well as playing a diverse range of assorted characters.
And Jerry, the stargazer? He's the token conspiracy theorist neighbor, socially inept but endearing in his trials. Around women, he gushes thoughts like an unplugged dam in hopes of bringing them closer, although the words only drive them away. All the relationships carved between the characters are sincere in both intent and delivery.
The format of the play changes continually. Moving from dream sequences to directly addressing the audience to documentary style to rewound to fantasy, it always keeps the audience always interested and sometimes disoriented.
Not to ruin the show before it even begins, realize that Tales of the Lost Formicans offers more than good fun and laughs. "This is a chance to see the work of a contemporary woman playwright that really deals issues we deal with in language we understand. It's a challenging play," Grossman said. You may not know what the Formicans are, or why nor where they are lost, but the best way to find out is to see the play for yourself.
Tales of the Lost Formicans, Balch Arena Theater, April 17-21 at 8 p.m., April 22 at 2 p.m., Tickets $5 with Tufts ID; all tickets are $1 for Wed., April 18., Opens Tonight.
