Do not go see "Gidion's Knot" at St. Louis Actors' Theater if you're looking for lighthearted entertainment. It's a play that slowly, carefully, grabs the audience by the throat and drags them onstage in an act of vicarious shock.
Oh, we don't actually see any blood or violence. This is several days after the fact, in an apparently innocuous setting, a grade school classroom. There are no children, just the teacher sitting quietly at her desk looking at her phone. She's Heather, played by Laurie McConnell, interrupted in her thoughts by a rather loud woman looking for a parent-teacher conference. That would be Corryn, played by Elizabeth Ann Townsend. Heather sends her to the office to check on where it would be – and Corryn returns. The conference is with her. Heather hadn't expected the conference would be held, because it's Corryn's son who has died.
We're prepared to be sympathetic to her, indeed to both of them. But Corryn becomes the epitome of raging against the dying of the light, manipulating and wheedling and accusing Heather, who's doing her best to be kind and understanding. There's no backup – the principal isn't in the building, it turns out, and it becomes womano a womano. Townsend's Corryn builds from distracted and demanding to sarcastic and crazed. It's a demanding role that she takes on flawlessly. Playing opposite such a character, McConnell has quite a task. Heather has only been a teacher for two years – this is what once was called a change-of-life vocation for her – so she's older but still, nothing much could prepare an educator for what's before her now. Her anxiety is seen in tugging at her sleeves, checking the phone, moving around. Her voice goes from polite to soothing to, eventually, quavering, barely managing not to succumb to the tsunami in the room. The balance between the two performances is nigh-on perfect.
Lee Ann Matthews directed, pacing so that things begin already at a simmer and rise steadily to a full boil. Not an easy evening (or afternoon), and at 70 minutes, not a long one. But very seriously good.
Gidion's Knot
through February 28
St. Louis Actors' Studio
Gaslight Theater
358 N. Boyle Ave.