For almost all of its 75 minutes, "Falling" is a tense, gripping piece of theater, a visit with a family bound so tightly together that a seismic split is peering over our shoulder.
Right there! There it is!
But playwright Deanna Jent, ducking much of her responsibility as an author, tosses us a rubber bone when we are prepared — even slavering — for a large chunk of meat.
"Falling," which opened the Mustard Seed Theatre 2011-12 season the other night at Fontbonne University, where it will run through Sept. 11, is a powerful and personal work for Jent, who is the artistic director of the theater and the mother of a teenager with autism. Her drama, like a radiator hose in a St. Louis summer, absorbs pressure until it simply bursts under an overdose of tension and realism.
The actors, under Lori Adams' taut direction, are uniformly excellent, with Michelle Hand first among equals, followed closely by Greg Johnston. They're married, and their eldest child, Josh (a terrific Jonathan Foster) is autistic. He's at a school for children with special needs, but he's nearing maturity, and his growing strength is creating problems. He needs routine, and the handful of items — marbles and feathers are two — that he can control. But sudden noises — a slamming door, a barking dog — leave him a confused, twitching, face-rubbing baby who cries and moans and strikes out until it stops. He's also discovered sexual urges, but he can solve that problem, though it confuses his visiting grandmother (Carmen Russell).
She's Johnston's mother, and she prays a lot, and reads the Bible, and adds to the increasing tension between Hand and Johnston. Although it provides Jent with laugh lines, the religion issue appears to be a growing intrusion into plays and movies (the upcoming "Brighton Rock" and "Higher Ground," to name two films). Perhaps art is following life, as in the score of politicians who pander constantly to the Almighty, but there seem to be more spotlights on the conflict between those who emblazon their religion on their foreheads and those who think it is a private relationship, strictly between him/her and whatever higher power they embrace.
Hand is a hard-wired bundle of energy, trying to hold her family together; Johnston, a fine match for her, is more laid-back in his approach, willing to give in to his son's demands, but he's at work all day while she has to wait and hope it is not a day when the school calls because there is a problem with Josh. But Hand takes the constant emotional beating, showing her pain when she abandons a glass of Shiraz in favor of a shot of bourbon.
Katie Donnelly rounds out the family as Lisa, the younger child. She is a typical adolescent, but the pressure of living with her brother takes its toll. Donnelly displays a proper attitude, nearing the point where she is willing to live with her grandmother to get away from the home situation.
And then Jent adopts a dishonest tactic, raising a false flag and leaving at least some of us shaking our heads and wondering what she is trying to tell us. "Falling" is an admirable effort, an obvious struggle for the author, but I think a more truthful approach can be more successful.
There's a lot of excellent technical work along the way, too. Shaun Sheley's movement and combat direction brought conflict scenes to vivid life, and John Stark's effective set, simple and believable, is enhanced by Julie Mack's light design.
Falling, a production of the Mustard Seed Theatre will run through Sept. 24 in the Fontbonne Theater.
— Joe