Buntport Theater continues to challenge themselves and their audiences, moving into a new realm with Indiana Indiana, an adaptation of Laird Hunt’s novel. Buntport has proven again and again that they can do many things well, particularly excellent comedy, but this production takes things in a much more serious, thoughtful, and even surreal direction, doing so beautifully. The production also integrates all aspects of the production brilliantly, with scenery, lighting, and projection all in tune to enhance the world of the play.
This play is a series of scenes that tell a story, but not in a conventional, linear sense. It is the story of the life of Noah Summers, told through his memories, which individually supply incomplete pictures of what has happened. We learn he was married, briefly – maybe. We meet his parents. We know and accept that “he just knows things that the rest of us don’t know,– and we get a visceral sense of the anguish he is feeling. Through the combination of all of these snippets of memory, we connect with him, even though his experiences are very unlike our own.
In spite of the nonlinearity of the story, the scenes are remarkably consistent in style and tone. As the focal point of the story, Noah wears a mask which sets him apart from the other characters. Scenes are staged creatively and diversely, helping to keep the audience in rapt attention throughout.
Evan Weissman is wonderfully understated and complex as Noah. He drifts through the show, onstage throughout, paradoxically anchoring things as they flow in all directions. His anguish is palpable, made the more remarkable as it comes and goes in the nonsequential scenes. All other characters are played by Erik Edborg, Hannah Duggan, and Brian Colonna, distinguishing the different roles through minor costume variation, vocal changes, and physical adjustments. Edborg is quirky, remorseful, and at times menacing as Virgil, Noah’s father. Colonna shows great range, first as the sympathetic and helpful Max, later as the Minister, a role with complexity and strength, and also as the Sheriff, nonjudgmentally looking to Noah for insights into unsolved cases. Duggan is appropriately maternal as Ruby, Noah’s mother, and efficient and by-the-book as the Nurse. Near the end she appears as Opal, delivering a very complex character that is both sympathetic and disturbing.
Normally, I separately describe the scenery and lighting, and credit the designers. Here, however, the Buntport ensemble has created an exquisite integrated visual collage that includes set, lighting, sound, and projections. The visual impact of the dramatic wall of jars is amazing. Bits and pieces of the set move on and off from all directions, with projections appearing and disappearing on any and all available surfaces. I can honestly say that I have never seen these technical aspects of a production integrated so completely and creatively into the action onstage as well as they are in Indiana Indiana. Without this tight integration, the impact of the show would have been less. Even the costumes, though somewhat neutral in tone, fit with everything else.
In the course of only about 80 minutes, Indiana Indiana gives the audience both an emotional and an intellectual understanding of the tragic, beautiful, and real life of Noah. Neither type of understanding is complete without the other, but combined, the whole person that we are connects with this character in a much more complete way. In the past, I’ve always left Buntport entertained, with a broad smile on my face. After Indiana Indiana, I was smiling, yes, but also thinking, feeling, pondering, and basking in the glow of a wonderful experience.
-Craig Williamson, September 15, 2009, North Denver Tribune