To answer the perennially perplexing question – “What to perform during the holidays?” – Denver’s perpetually innovative Buntport Theater has created “Winter in Graupel Bay,” a poignant and witty snapshot of the residents of a small town on the shortest day of the year.
The company’s evolving proficiency in collaborative theater – this is its 20th original production – expresses itself in a delightfully complex and interwoven storyline and a poetic script that conjures a neighborhood somewhere in the vicinity of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” and Dylan Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood.”
A spare but multifaceted set offers us a cutaway of the residents’ living quarters and entry into their intimate behavior. The jazzy sound design that accompanies the scenic interludes of the burghers scurrying to and fro sets an up-tempo pace for the proceedings.
Above all, Graupel Bay is inhabited by a collection of quintessential characters; company members play multiple roles. Precocious Polly Soldonovich (Erin Rollman) serves as the narrator, setting the stage and filling us in on the locals’ eccentricities. Dressed in a jumper and accompanied by only a small rubber ball, Rollman skips from one abode to the next, inviting us to join her as she makes her inquisitive rounds.
First, there’s Mrs. Green, an elderly gossip who trades barbs with Mrs. Walsper at tea every day, where they perform their version of Russian roulette, each trying to poison the other when she’s not looking. In an ongoing series of vignettes, Hannah Duggan and Rollman switch cups with elaborate hand choreography, orchestrated to a riot of vocal gymnastics that air the neighborhood’s dirty laundry.
Every town needs a loser, and in Graupel Bay that’s Andrew Fromer, who for the life of him can’t seem to land a job. Morose from head to toe with a face nearly as long, Brian Colonna’s Andrew mopes around town when he’s not seeking solace in sleep. We learn he’s inherited his karma from Great-Grandfather Fromer (Evan Weissman), who spent his whole career in show biz as the rear end of a horse.
Weissman sends us to a bygone era with his melodramatic flair for vaudevillian song and dance numbers – first a soft-shoe solo and then a spin around the stage with Duggan’s Peg Mulord.
Erik Edborg, as the local drunk, Toothy Bill, cleverly avoids overdoing the stereotypical indications of inebriation, painting a souse worthy of the best fools: silly one moment, astute the next.
As the day unfolds, we meet the rest of the townfolk, including the irrepressible Rollman’s Miss Perkins, the terminally cheery shop owner; Lady Fergus, a pretentious bed-bound grand dame of operatic proportions; Colonna and Duggan’s Bob and Addy Hooks, he obsessed with the obits and she with her cockatoo; Weissman’s Clark Walters, a couch potato with a penchant for old movies; Bruce Bentley, whose daily purchase of flour is a local mystery; and Edborg’s William and Larry Lunelia, a lonely banker and a stargazing dreamer.
If you’re burned out on the Sugarplum Fairy’s magic and Ebenezer Scrooge’s miraculous transformation, perhaps a day in Graupel Bay is just the ticket to lift your holiday spirits and bring home your everyday blessings.
-Bob Bows, December 8th, 2006, Denver Post