If there is a common theme to the four plays currently running at the Crystal Theatre, it is that work does not define a person. In exploring this straightforward insight through the minds of three locally connected playwrights, Montana Rep Missoula continues to define itself by its excellent and important work.
The quartet of new plays — split into two nights, with two by Missoula playwright Roger Hedden, plus one each by Missoula Colony regulars James McLure and Ron Fitzgerald — comprise the final act by MRM in a season themed around topics of labor and profession.
One could say the UM-based company has saved its best for last.
Set against a hazy, monochromatic mountain backdrop, with a no-frills bar serving as a common prop, all four plays clearly take the land and culture of the Rocky Mountain West as a starting point. Hardened (or just plain disengaged) and underpaid (or only passing through), these are characters you know, if you’ve spent much time around here.
There’s Augie (named after, “like, the second-greatest Caesar”) and Slim (“It’s actually on my birth certificate”), two locally bred “landscape maintenance” workers at the center of Hedden’s “If I Had,” impotent schemers who can’t even figure out a decent way to “stick it” to the rich outsiders.
There’s Del (in Fitzgerald’s “Boomtown”) and Mickey (in McLure’s “Used Cars”) — fast-talking, hard-driven types who come from the apparent polar antithesis of Big Sky Country: New Jersey.
And in between are all the lovable oddballs — trick shooters and whittlers, tongue-tied poets and long-winded barflies — that you’d expect to find on this island of misfit toys that we call Montana.
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Hedden’s plays, both clocking in the 20-minute range, serve as overtures on each night.
“If I Had” — which is paired up on the same night with McLure’s “Used Cars” — is a snappy, foul-mouthed riff on the resentments of the economically disadvantaged.
Hedden’s other play, “Deep in the Hole” — which runs with Fitzgerald’s “Boomtown” — concerns itself with four foul-mouthed twenty-somethings who, lacking much for employment, seek meaning in bottles of vodka, spin-the-bottle, and mysterious envelopes of white powder.
When Glen, the shambling loser sidekick to blustery Ben, mistakes the powder for cocaine, everyone freaks out: Perhaps it’s anthrax, or baby laxative, or…
“Do you really think that something that interesting is going to happen to US!?,” Ben booms, stating the basic case of at the heart of Hedden’s humor in both plays: Nobody really cares what these laughable losers think or do.
Both plays are given exuberant stagings here, peppered with moment of hilarity. David Mills-Low brings slackjawed gravity to the role of Slim; Jim Sontag stands out as Ben, a hirsute slacker Don Juan. Neither production ultimately feels fully fleshed out — a product, perhaps, of the plays’ brevity; but both set the stage and warm up the crowd nicely for what follows.
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In the case of “Boomtown,” what follows is already an aftermath by the time it begins: The town of Tar River, Wyoming, is a community in memory alone. Most of the local ranchers have sold their land to the gas-drilling company; the town is overrun by Mexicans and a scattering of itinerant Americans who came to work the rigs.
“I’m the one who’s from here,” barks Del, a glowering laborer with an unrealized romantic streak and an ill-advised inclination to streak with animals. “Yeah, okay, not here. But like, you know, New Jersey.”
Julip, on the other hand, isn’t just from here; as owner of the local bar, she’s pretty much the only “here” left in Tar River. Hardened by years listening to the barstool yammerings of Roy, the last hold-out among the ranchers, and the bygone ramblings of Hank, an old-time trick-shooter teetering on his last legs, Julip clings to hope for her hometown, and for love; yet she blanches when it comes knocking.
The result is a wide-ranging, deeply human drama about the mystery and magic of love in the face of decay. It’s also a side-splitting comedy in which nothing — not rape nor racism, deaf nor dumb, dog fights nor bull bites — is out of bounds.
Stacy Ohrt-Billingslea, as the jut-jawed Julep, trades both barbs and sparks with Andy Greenfield, as Del. A much sweeter thing blossoms between Salina Chatlain, as the deaf waitress Briar, and Aaron Roos, playing the simpleton Billy.
Meantime, in the role of Hank the trick-shooter, James McLure nearly steals the entire show when he finally cocks his old gun, the Judge.
“You named your gun?” Del asks incredulously.
“Course I named my gun,” Hank drawls. “Named the dog, didn’t I? Then he got the rabies and I had to shoot him.”
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It’s dark humor at its most heartwarming. In contrast, McLure’s own “Used Cars” is a cynical and smartly written pas de deux in which the language of love and commerce twists together into a tight knot of hilarity.
Kay is a poetry student from Montana; Mickey is a used car salesman from Philadelphia. He’s full of schtick and sleeze; she’s just drunk enough to fancy herself his equal, and get snared into his wordplay.
Stuck together at “the Iron Rhino” during a snowstorm, the two fall into one of those vacuously earnest barstool conversations that should feel familiar to anyone who’s spent much time stuck in a Missoula bar during a snowstorm — that is, until Mickey ups the ante by betting Kay that he can sell her a used car.
“Why would you do this?” she asks.
“To sleep with you,” he replies.
Thus begins the dance, with Kay angling ever away even as she keeps a curious eye cast over her shoulder. It’s inevitable that Mickey will reel her in — if not with flattery, then with mystery, or perhaps with self-pity — but getting there is all the fun in this laugh-a-minute play.
“How often do you get to laugh out loud for 20 minutes straight,” mused one audience member at the opening performance of “Used Cars” and “If I Had” last week, “and you’re not just doing it to be nice to your friends?”
Not often around here. But in these four plays, the opportunity comes in splashing waves, so fast and frothy that one risks drowning in the hilarity. Good luck choosing between the two nights; better to pick both: These four plays are as good as anything that has hit Missoula stages in years.
Montana Rep Missoula presents four one-act plays by Roger Hedden, Ron Fitzgerald and James McLure at the Crystal Theatre, April 13-17. Each night features two of the four plays. “Boomtown” and “Deep in the Hole” run together on April 14, and 16; “If I Had” and “Used Cars” run together on April 13, 15, and 17. Admission is $10 Tuesdays-Thursdays, $15 on Fridays and Saturdays, with a $2 discount for the four-show package. For more information, visit www.montanarep.org.
[...] years, McLure was involved in several noteworthy productions in Missoula. I won’t ever forget his show-stealing turn in Ron Fitzgerald’s “Boomtown” last year — which ran at the Crystal Theatre [...]