Nightmares are alive in the day as well as the night in this attention-compelling collaboration between two Cincinnati groups, the dance company Pones, Inc., and the theater company Queen City Flash. They are natural collaborators, both dedicated to expanding how people experience theater and dance.
All this works well with playwright Trey Tatum’s script. He makes an appearance when things have progressed to a pretty pass, to speak about what’s going on and where we are in his story.
The two actors (Mac Blais and Alex Roberts) are conveniently identified as “Me” (Blais) and “You” (Roberts, whose “Alex” apparently is short for Alexandra). They are supposed to be teenagers but do seem a few years beyond, despite the script. The hesitations and indecisions that haunt that volatile period are rife in their conversation. She is more cautious than he; she has to accept his concern for his family, as she apparently cannot meet it with concern for her own.
The two have taken refuge in a backyard shelter, behind the house where “Me” lives with his parents and siblings, hiding from unnamed but malevolent forces that threaten their world. The dancers embody the nebulous fears and forces accompanying all this. There is talk of being “in the belly of the beast” and relating themselves to Jonah and the belly of the whale. As it happens, the Beatles also are an element in the conversation and the confrontations going on.
There are nine Pones dancers, eight of them women. The single male becomes, in a late moment, almost an actor in a direct interaction with “Me” and “You.” The dancers frequently collapse on stage, holding their poses, so that the actors must stride between and over them in carrying out their scenes. Is that perhaps what we must do with memories? The Pones dancers are lithe and practiced; they carry out their assignments with expressionless faces and sometimes telling gestures. Not until near the end, when the Beatles are playing, do they actually interact with “Me” and “You.” Their presence is accepted but their message not longed for.
This is an interesting and well-formed production, carried out with style. Both groups have Fringe histories: in 2014 Pones received Producers’ Pick and Queen City Flash an Artists’ Pick. They are vibrant local producers with strong followings — their opening night performance was the first sold-out event of the 2015 Fringe. Shelter is in every way a Cincinnati product: playwright Trey Tatum and his wife, Bridget Leak, director of this production, are based here, as is composer Galen Tipton, whose music underlies the action.
Jane Durrell is a freelance arts critic and has contributed to CityBeat since its founding in 1994.
Read the official 32-page FRINGE FESTIVAL GUIDE here and find the full performance lineup here.
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 2, 2015.