WHAT: The Aliens
WHERE: Players' Ring (Produced in collaboration with Bardo Theatre Company)
BLURB: A quiet, yet truly moving piece
HIGH POINT: Everything
The Aliens, a character-study drama, with lovely, often touching humor, is an exquisite gem.
This script, by Annie Baker, is a sloooow burn, but its pace is truth, and its periods of silence fitting. It's individuals sharing the comfort of company, lost in their own heads, in faithful, authentic moments.
While the action unfolds takes its time, the characters are nearly immediate, and honest, never blinking throughout the production.
It's a small town in Vermont. Two friends (and former band mates), Jasper (Robert Fabricio Armstrong), a high-school dropout, and budding writer, and KJ (Timothy Hackney), a college drop-out, use a cordoned-off area in an alleyway behind a coffee shop as their personal hangout spot. The two marginalized thirty-somethings languish at the picnic table, talk, make music and poetry, partake in 'shrooms, and chill.
Evan (Sam Robert Rogers), a high school student and shop-employee, is sent to tell the Jasper and KJ to stop hanging in the "employee's only" space. Over time, as the pair returns, and Evan repeats the request, the older men take a liking to the nerdy, shy kid and friend him.
Jasper and KJ share their silence as well as tales about their friendship. Over time they talk about their band (with its plethora of names, including The Aliens), sing a tune they wrote, and Jasper reads excerpts from the moving novel he's penning. It's easy times, three outsiders just hangin'.
But much is implied within the exchanges, strong pictures of lives develop. Makes Act II's moves all the more deeply felt.
The show is nearly void of grand gesture, and in fact has prolonged, graceful stretches of silence. This script relies heavily on the most quietly nuanced performance, the unexaggerated body movement, the simple facial take, or silent stare. Its structure puts the performer/portrayal under a microscope - almost literally in the small Ring where actors performer yards from the audience, mere feet in some cases.
Thank the theater gods this show is blessed with incredible talent, the type true theater enthusiasts relishes in. This trio of artists make a tricky contemporary piece appear effortless with their quietly powerful portrayals.
Each actor shows an incredible distinction of character through body language, posture, muscle tension, facial expression; all three are thoroughly believable.
Decades of theater viewing have seen a goodly share of substance abusing characters, but non more convincing than Hackney as KJ. Slack muscles, eyes at half mast with a true sense of weight rather than squint, perfection. It's only one of the many incredible moves Hackney uses to bring his character convincingly to life. Equally impressive is his transition in Act II - noticeable and notable.
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