Tracy Letts, Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright of August: Osage County, also wrote Man from Nebraska, which is currently running in San Diego at the Old Town Cygnet Theater. It's directed there by Francis Gercke, who recently gave us Fully Committed.
Relying heavily on lighting and sound design to achieve visual cohesion, this work is performed with no stage props beyond several straight-backed chairs and a couple of wooden stools. The method is compelling in that it engages the viewer's imagination about what is happening onstage in ways that are not normally required when attending a stage play. All the actors are very good at creating a reality that is actually space.
The stage is set by Brian Redfern with two brick walls and a billboard against which various lighting projections, provided ingeniously by Eric Lotze, create the impressions of riding in a car, being inside a church, inside a nursing home, a house, an office, a London pub and a flat, and the nights sky. Each setting is enhanced with sound effects, opening with a pedal-steel guitar announcing the fact of the play's landscape and goes on to include TV show soundtracks, birds chirping, bacon frying and a toaster popping. The sound design by George Ye is very subtle and enhances the physical movements of the actors.
The story takes place in Lincoln, Nebraska, where Ken Carpenter (Michael Rich Sears) is a married insurance agency owner with two grown daughters, one who is married and works for him, the other away at school. His marriage is stale, with no apparent spark and almost no communication. He is a boring man. He is fussy and reticent. He goes to work, goes to the Baptist Church, and is dutiful. And then, after a visit to his mother Cammie (Sandra Ellis-Troy) in a nursing home, he awakens in the middle of the night experiencing acute anxiety and the certain knowledge that he no longer believes in God. He tells his concerned wife, Nancy (Robin Christ) that he can no longer see the stars, that they no longer make sense to him. Announcing that you do not believe in God in his family and social circle is the same thing as stating you are insane. These people exist in a place that accepts the reality of a particular form of God as verifiable fact, as tangible as the TV sets they spend so much time watching. Not believing is laughable, preposterous, and absolutely unacceptable. There is no room for doubt.
The only person who does seem to validate the crisis Ken is experiencing is his pastor, Reverend Todd (John DeCarlo), who advises him to go on vacation, get out of Lincoln. Not exactly spiritual counseling, and probably not what a Baptist minister might be expected to prescribe, but intended humanely. Because he was there once in the Service, Ken chooses to go to London. While en route, he encounters Pat Monday (Linda Libby), a sexually assertive Coca Cola executive who splits her time between London and the States. She gives seducing Ken a go, only to be ignored by the befuddled Ken, who is thinking only of the wife he just walked out on, for reasons he is entirely unable to articulate.
The hotel he stays at in Leicester Square has a handy bar where Ken goes to sip ginger ale and attempt conversation with the bartender, who puts up with him because Americans are big tippers. The barkeep, Tamyra (Monique Gaffney) is a worldly cynic of 23 or so who lives with her flatmate Harry Brown (Jeffrey Jones), and is a model for his sculptures.
Harry has one of the most tantalizing exchanges of the play, when he tells Ken that all Americans are defensive because they see the beginning of the end, and it scares them to death.
The hollow and dark underbelly of American life and the American Dream is a theme that is hinted at but not explored further. It would go a long way in explaining his sudden realization that he feels his life is pointless, and I would have liked to have it writ larger in the fabric of the story. In his search for the meaning of Life, God and Everything, Ken gets rip-roaring drunk, but not so drunk (even though he is a lifelong teetotaler) that he cannot successfully repel the advances of a rapacious Pat. He later takes Ecstasy, or something very like it, and goes clubbing with the 20-something Tamyra and Harry, with whom he subsequently moves in (they allow this to have him pay the rent) and starts sculpting.
Over the course of many weeks he does not bother to call his wife or inquire after the well-being of his mother or children. His married daughter Ashley (Amanda Sitton), does call him, though, to let him know she is angry and resentful, and that God is definitely on her side on this issue. She is so smug and assured of her righteousness, it is difficult to not side with Ken, even though he is behaving like a selfish child, and in general, it is very difficult to side with him.
He has a revelatory moment when he is visited briefly by the spirit of his mother, who has passed away in Lincoln, and he remembers that he prayed for her to die. The audience is left to ponder whether the fact that she did not die quickly enough is what made him wonder whether or not God was up in heaven, pulling for Ken.
He abandons London and heads home to Nancy, who has been "keeping company" (eating at Applebee's and watching TV) with the Reverend's unexpectedly crass father, Bud (Jack Missett). He begs her forgiveness, she provides it after he tells her that yes, now he believes in God again, and the stars return to the heavens. Literally.
I liked this play on some levels - the acting was very good, the staging was creative, the light and sound designs were terrific. It is the play, itself, I take exception to. The characters are, for the most part, one dimensional, apart from the Reverend and Tamyra, who both strike me as more real. It is confusing and does not resolve itself satisfactorily. Yes, Man from Nebraska is about a man who is confused, but the story does not adequately explain why he is really having this crisis of faith or why it goes away. Really, Ken seems more like an average Midwestern businessman who has a midlife crisis and goes on a six-week bender of self indulgence just to do it. There is no real soul searching apparent, no self-appraisal, no examining his conscience. He walks away from his wife, business, children and life for no clear reason and returns several weeks later, to the same wife, business and children who now don't really trust him. Maybe that is the point: his self indulgence will produce payback. His sin of doubt will be punished.
