Even when they’re telling the sweet, Capra-esque story of a small town, the creators of Buntport Theater sprinkle plenty of oddity on top. The result is Winter in Graupel Bay, a wonderfully strange cluster of characters exhibiting their eccentricities and their humanity.
An original work, Winter in Graupel Bay plays like Our Town with crossed eyes.
Instead of a grounded man, our narrator is a little girl who sees all the transactions of her hometown and brings them to us. Like most Buntport work, the five actors of the troupe play multiple characters. They live their lives on a warehouse-sized set that displays the town interiors like a skeletal dollhouse.
It’s the shortest day of the year in Graupel Bay, but that’s all right – no one has all that much to do. Two middle-aged women, played squeaky-voiced by Erin Rollman and smoky by Hannah Duggan, gossip about the town residents while trying to poison one another. Town drunk Toothy Bill (a just tipsy-enough Erik Edborg) stumbles around delivering editorials on such subjects as raisins (he’s against them, a stance I wholeheartedly support).
Brian Colonna plays the town sad-sack, Andrew Fromer, who can’t find a job, while Evan Weissman is most memorable as the solid yet dreamy Bruce Bentley, trying to conjure a snowfall so he can continue documenting individual flakes.
Humor falls across the town, particularly delivered by Rollman and Duggan. As the little girl, Polly, Duggan corrects the ladies’ gossip: “Mr. Morgan, it’s true, isn’t talking to his wife, but mostly because he lost his voice on Tuesday.” As the bed-bound Lady Fergus, Rollman petulantly and memorably bosses around her patient manservant.
Duggan gives the most wistful performance as the lovelorn Peg, who dreams of Bruce Bentley and being called Margaret. She dreams up a lovely romantic dance number with Bruce, a flight of fancy interspersed with sad and funny bits of realism.
Technically, the show is not showy but well-dreamt. Lighting and direction guide our attentions across the little boxes that make up this tiny, endearing town.
-Lisa Bornstein, December 15, 2006, Rocky Mountain News