The Turquoise Pontiac (Repeats July 22, 31, and Aug 7)

One Thirty Productions’ The Turquoise Pontiac begins on a wonderful note: a distressed young man wanders into an empty bar and tells the bartender that he has just encountered a train barreling towards him on Route 66, narrowly missing him. On top of that, he spotted a Wagnerian Hildegard singing Die Valkyrie in beautiful soprano on top of the train. This bizarre opening could have been the intriguing beginning to a magical realist play, for example, but instead Ellsworth Schave’s new work is so confusing and jumbled that it’s tempting to call it “postmodern”— always a last resort compliment when giving a play the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, it confounds the audience too much to be effective drama, and too little to be effective postmodernism.

It is, in fact, a perplexing piece of whimsy. When the traveler (Shane Beeson) first bursts onto the scene, he knows exactly what he saw on top of the train, and yet when the soprano (a breast-plated Morgan Justiss) appears and asks him if he knows anything about opera, he says “I saw a Gilbert and Sullivan show in Houston once.” Odd, since he knew so well that she was singing Wagner. Then a series of incomprehensible exchanges and incidents occur, in which the singer tries to run away to Disneyland with the traveler, and the train’s engineer (Dan Tillman) enters and says a few cryptic lines. By the end, when the bartender and the engineer randomly lament the decline of American culture, it seems all too ironic.

The runaway train sighting is never truly resolved, nor are the dozens of increasingly bizarre plot points that Schave introduces. In its hour running time, it deals with the inefficacy of public education, Disneyland, medieval decorative aesthetics, car maintenance, train maintenance, dueling, the social contract and more. The play is apparently a companion piece to Schave’s Under a Texaco Canopy, which was produced at FIT last year, and which I did not see. Regardless, it is presented here as its own piece, and it seems hard to imagine that it could ever make any sense, whether on its own or with a companion. It was sloppily directed and designed by Larry Randolph, and the cast, with the exception of Elias Taylorson’s hilarious turn as the mordant bartender, seems confused as to what exactly they are saying. Who can blame them? The Turquoise Pontiac, named for the traveler’s shiny car, which is unimportant to the plot, is more like a compilation of a dozen different ideas for a play. Or rather, a dozen textural details for a dozen very different plays, out of which perhaps one would make for compelling drama.

The cast of The Muse (from left) Newton Pittman, Christina Neubrand, Lulu Ward, Anastasia Munoz, John M. Flores and Maryam Baig Lush (Courtesy Photo)

The Muse (Repeats July 24, 29, & 31)

The Drama Club is doing something different for Dallas theater. With The Muse, a wordless choreographed story that is part Nijinsky, part Noh, part Jean-Pierre Jeunet, part Jim Henson, they have mounted what is likely to be the most unique production at the Festival of Independent Theaters. Featuring stellar design by writer Jeffrey Schmidt and director Lydia Mackay, the piece is a tale set in some sort of primitive world, in which a nubile, scantily clad woman comes into being and encounters three different characters.

The hour passed quickly, but there were many things I did not understand by the time the cast crossed the stage holding a “To Be Continued” banner. For example, the Drama Club’s website provides more detail than the program about the cast of characters: “The muse – a transgender youth; Adrastos – friend to the muse; Machinist – keeps the beat; Cutter – soldier of fashion, has the power of divination; Draper – Cutter’s parasitic sister, tamer of wild things.” I picked up on almost none of this. With no words and little time, the characters never fulfilled the roles as advertised. Specifically, Anastasia Munoz as the Muse was clearly an innocent coming into some sort of post-Edenic sexual awakening, but there were few indications of her transgender.

What was clear was that the “Machinist,” played by Newton Pittman, did indeed keep the beat, and was the only character who never left the stage. Encased in a fantastic triangular cage, on which hung various rusting and twisting instruments, he provided a musical score and sound effects throughout the piece. The play is worth seeing for his cage alone.

Relying entirely on dance and action and facial expressions, the piece was not as physically compelling as it could have been, despite some breathtaking early moments. But in terms of design and originality, they have made The Drama Club the new independent theater to watch.

Main image: Morgan Justiss in The Turquoise Pontiac by Ellsworth Schave; presented by One Thirty Productions (Courtesy Photo).