Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play$33-$48. Through May 22. freeFall Theatre, 6099 Central Ave., St. Pete. 727-498-5205. freefalltheatre.com.
The most disturbing drama I’ve seen in years — no, one of the most disturbing dramas I’ve ever seen — is Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, currently showing in a thrillingly first-rate production at freeFall Theatre. This shocker with music (by Michael Friedman) dares to suggest that, after an apocalypse, all that Americans will have to fall back upon for intellectual, spiritual and moral guidance are half-remembered, grotesquely exaggerated episodes of TV’s The Simpsons.
If this sounds wonderfully funny, think again: In Washburn’s vision, surviving humans start innocently enough remembering favorite lines of Simpsons dialogue, but finish decades later by turning the animated series into a violent religious rite suffused with brutality and ugliness unsoftened by anything vaguely redolent of love or compassion. Forget The Bible, Shakespeare, Beethoven’s "Ninth": Washburn’s Yanks have spent so much time in front of the television, no hopeful icon or anthem has ever touched them. What has reached them — what binds them together — is the saga of Homer and Marge, Bart and Lisa, along with some mindless commercials and a few Top 40 songs. And with no well of goodness from which to draw sustenance, these personages turn Matt Groening’s comic characters into dreadful figures in a savage, gruesome melodrama, with tenderness and kindness as scarce as working light bulbs.
The play starts with a group of survivors from some terrible cataclysm reminding each other of favorite Simpsons moments as they keep a lookout for vandals. The entire American electrical grid has collapsed, leading to a series of disasters at nuclear plants around the country. Doing their best to maintain peace and solidarity, Matt (Nick Lerew), Maria (Kelly Pekar), Jenny (Susan Haldeman), Sam (Christopher Rutherford) and Colleen (Hannah Benitez) keep guns at the ready even as they entertain each other with memories from The Simpsons. When a stranger (T. Robert Pigott) appears, they search him for weapons before accepting him into the group, reeling off lists of loved ones they hope he’s encountered. The somber atmosphere has a humanity easily recognized.
In Act Two, this humanity is under siege. Now the aforementioned characters, joined by Quincy (Kaylin Seckel), are part of a traveling theater troupe — with no electricity, live theater’s the only game in town — directed by Colleen (Hannah Benitez) and specializing in Simpsons episodes and favorite commercials. There’s something manic about these performances, something unhealthy and shrill, but at least the troupe has a way of surviving. After another 75 years pass, what started as entertainment has become ritual, vicious, gruesome and nihilistic. I can’t emphasize enough the horror of Act Three’s ceremonies, based on the Simpsons episode “Cape Feare” (itself based on two movies by similar names) but looking more like a nightmare dominated by a depraved Mr. Burns. All reminders of the faces behind the masks have disappeared; theater has become reality and everything smells of death. Is Washburn giving us her vision of the bitter truth behind the American façade?
“Think of Homer and Bart as imagined by H. P. Lovecraft.”
Washburn leaves us to decipher her intentions, and that’s one more courageous move out of a hundred that makes this intrepid play work. Eric Davis manages the realism of Act One as capably as he gives us the extremes of Acts Two and Three. Michael Raabe’s musical direction is superb, as are Ryan Finzelber’s lighting (bravely muted throughout Act One) and Erica Goldman’s props. Steven K. Mitchell designed the set, including the weird houseboat in Act Three, and director Davis also created the clothes, both for TV characters and civilians. I’m haunted by the masks worn in Act Three: think of Homer and Bart as imagined by H. P. Lovecraft. If this is how Washburn sees America, I have to wonder at what meds still allow her to write.
This play affected me more than most others. I left the theater disoriented and worried: for me, for Washburn, for this country. It’s not often that a drama leaves me so moved. Consider that a recommendation.
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This article appears in May 5-11, 2016.