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It's one thing for a play to suggest that everyone who lived through the American Civil War came down with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; it's another thing for the actors and director of that play to apparently suffer from the same malady. But that's the story with Murder Ballad, a joint production of the Blue Scarf Collective and The Studio@620. This experience proceeds so lethargically, with such amateurish energies, I can hardly believe that it was mounted before a paying audience.
Of course, I saw it in a preview, so it may be that everything changed on opening night. But it's simply unlikely that a production that fails on so many different levels could be revolutionized in 24 hours. If you must buy a ticket, bring infinite patience and a forgiving spirit.
The plot of the play — by Heather L. Jones — follows several interrelated characters as they try to survive in 1866 Knoxville, Tennessee: Carter the photographer, who's been "seeing things" ever since the war, and whose visions are anachronistically projected on a back wall; Willie, who's lost all his desire to live, and just wants to wander by the exceedingly unconvincing river that meanders along the lip of the stage; and Davis, whose problem is an evil twin who won't stop goading him to ever greater levels of wickedness and Don Juanism.
And there are the ladies: sluttish Polly, who intends to foist her unborn baby on Davis; virtuous Lucy, who's attracted to a certain brokenness in brain-dead Willy; and Delia, who's being protected from the knowledge that her lover didn't die heroically but actually pulled a gun on himself.
As all their destinies intertwine (in simplistic, cartoonish ways), we're apparently supposed to reflect that not all the wounds of war are quite visible. What we really discover is that even post-Civil War America can be treated as a soap opera, and mental derangement predated Freud by many decades. Beyond that the play has no literary, psychological or philosophical interest. It does have some moments of music — actor Rick Stutzel accompanies his singing of some traditional ballads with adequately rendered acoustic guitar — and these almost distract one from the play they fail to illuminate. But at the end of Murder Ballad, you don't even feel that you now understand the murder ballads of a previous century. You don't feel much at all.
Bonnie Agan in three parts is the real thing, a talented artist, displaying subtleties of emotion and intelligence every moment that she's onstage. As good-hearted Delia, Nicole Jeannine Smith comes across with so much integrity, you'd trust her with your house, your children, and your winning lottery ticket. But that's where the good acting ends.
Brian Ransom's set design is exceedingly unattractive — a long narrow strip of an environment featuring mismatched chairs, tables and cabinets, with that so-called river downstage to which everyone is eventually drawn. Selena Ambush's directing is poorly paced and badly focused — there are several occasions when you don't know what you're supposed to be looking at — and the climactic carnage is even more unbelievable than these things usually are. Carter's proto-typical camera looks like nothing more than an empty box.
I didn't give up on other theaters when they were starting their Bay area runs, and I'm not giving up on Blue Scarf. Once it recognizes its best self, once it commits itself to artistic rigor, canny script selection, uncompromising standards on every level, it could turn out to be essential. Maybe the next step is simply a play with a smaller canvas, carefully cast and precisely staged. Sometimes excellence needs nurturing.
That's not Murder Ballad. But it could be the next play, or the next. Watch this space.
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2011.