Most Cincinnatians don’t know that in 1982 a plane crashed into a bookstore in Montgomery, killing six men. One of the men was Carl Johnson, a former banker who had stolen more than $600,000 seven years before and hidden $50,000 somewhere in Cincinnati. To this day, that money is still missing: Its location went to the grave with Johnson, four FBI agents and a private detective from Chicago.
Hugo West Theatricals’ writers Mike Hall and Joshua Steele and director Greg Procaccino continue the story where reality ends. Cessna: A Drama Noir is a tale in the vein of its title, with four actors bringing the aftermath of the crash to life in a way that blends fiction with fact while dripping with noir and existential dread.
Agent John Lockwood (Mike Hall) comes to Cincinnati to find the money. In the process he encounters Officer Charlie Penn (Carter Bratton) and femme fatale Dawn Kenicott (Mindy Heithaus). They revolve around Michael G. Bath, who plays not just Johnson but three other roles that lend the show a dream-like logic.
Aiding in this ephemeral feeling is the live keyboard, trumpet and bass that accompany the action and transition the scenes. And, of course, like any good mystery, there’s a MacGuffin, a clandestine object, much like the Maltese Falcon that can drive people to actions they didn’t know they were capable of committing.
The actors are game for a genre that is fatalistic, moody and drenched in sweat. Hall in the lead has the right amount of machismo subverted by impotent rage and mommy issues that captures the hapless plight of a detective discovering he’s in over his head. Bratton plays rookie well, and when the time is right transitions into a man who is more than he seems. Heithaus, meanwhile, is all fast talk and transatlantic accent, convincingly wrapping men around her finger. But it’s Bath who excels, alternating between different degrees of sleazy and sinister with an ease reminiscent of Jackie Earle Haley.
Cessna is not without its problems. Hall and Steele’s script is hardboiled enough and has numerous self-referential Cincinnati jokes, but perhaps it’s first-night jitters or an attempt at Robert Altman-esque naturalism, but many of the actors overlapped each other’s dialogue in a way that was clumsy. The same is true of the live music that sometimes drowned out spoken dialogue. An over-reliance on props, lights and recordings also tripped the players up.
But all theater is artifice, and the rest of the show more than makes up for any missteps. Even if the Chinatown quotes interspersed throughout are a little on-the-nose, Cessna earns a spot in a long line of pulp.
This article appears in Jun 1-8, 2016.