Boston actor-writer John Kuntz's new play "Jasper Lake" never takes its cues from traditional sources. His script challenges the audience because instead of logically unfolding the plot, it communicates its story thematically via moments of poetic resonance.
Although the cast and crew do an excellent job portraying the mystifying concept of the script, the play's unique form detracts heavily from its structural unity and general comprehensibility. The audience is ultimately hard-pressed to identify a clear message from the montage of lyrical sequences and roughly-drawn characters strangely removed from an overall linear progression.
This lyrical, haunted and tortuous new work runs through next weekend at Commonwealth Ave.'s hidden gem, the Boston Playwrights' Theatre. This theater serves as a great forum for showcasing new talent with able actors and designers, and the new works that are staged here receive a solid performance from a collection of professionals and college students, providing an interesting combination.
The plot of "Jasper Lake" appears simple enough to follow, but its dual-story format and lack of a clear connection between the two plotlines complicates the matter.
The title, "Jasper Lake," refers to a gated community where upper-middle class residents reside. The peaceful surrounding of the community on the lake is a shiny exterior for the desires and forces eating away at the people on the inside, while at the same time, a young woman and a hitchhiker she has picked up drive towards the lake.
Kuntz identifies his hometown as the inspiration for "Jasper Lake," where even though people have money, they are still haunted by many personal demons. When asked about the meanings behind his play, which were not entirely clear after viewing, Kuntz said that "everyone has their 'Jasper Lake.'"
Upon further questioning, he refused to offer his interpretation as he cited the need for each person to interpret the play individually.
As for the writer himself, Kuntz demonstrates an unbelievable knack for creating heightened moments of theatricality stemming from the use of dramatic and literary devices.
Like many poetic writers, he employs the use of word and phrase repetition in an almost musical fashion where each character says a part of the line in the lyricized expressions of a theme.
In most cases, these themes continuously resurface and repeat even before their meanings are evident. When the significance is revealed, usually in some type of realistic sequence, the two strands of the narrative become linked in a way not so common to the theater.
Yet it is not only the literary techniques that Kuntz employs in the script that make his play so unconventional and hard to follow. The episodic story uses the power of the theater's unique immediacy to draw the audience out of its usual obsession with plot evolution and directly into the play's themes, helping Kuntz's efforts to illuminate the fears, desires, and constraints everyone can identify with.
Kuntz's writing may just be too far ahead of what viewers are able to digest in contemporary entertainment. The dominant trends of film and television today (as well as conventions of 20th century theater) certainly train the viewers to search for a plot and to guess what is going to happen next.
But on the other hand, Kuntz may have just been too enamored with the creation of tender and ferocious moments in his play to have set aside enough time to truly develop a more coherent script.
The connections in this play become clearer upon further reflection, but a great show needs to be engaging enough throughout the performance that the audience will reflect on it later. It is hard to tell if everyone in the theater left "Jasper Lake" with such a strong impression that they would be prompted to contemplate it later on.
Although the Boston Playwrights' Theatre places the focus of the performance on the writer, the rest of the crew helps to give it voice and life. The direction of Douglas Mercer and the set design of Eric Allgeier help to illuminate the lyricism of the play's more poignant moments, but are also culprits in failing to make the show more comprehensible. More visual cues, like the verbal phrases, could have been used to help the audience connect the pieces of the story together.
All in all, the acting is solid, and no one performer really stands out more than the others. Part of the reason the actors do not outshine one another is that the characters all have equal say in the drama. The lack of a central character (a conventional narrative technique) once again leaves the audience searching for consistency.
The performance's loose and different structure keeps the audience from knowing what to think and lets the play itself remain the focus of the production. But while the story has all the elements of a good drama and the writer has a lot of powerful tools at his hand, Kuntz is still awaiting the final marriage of these two elements.
For more information, call the Boston Playwrights' Theatre at 617-358-7529 located at 949 Commonwealth Ave. on the Green B Line Pleasant St. station. The play runs next weekend Thursday through Sunday.
