Like good wine, Charles Traeger's "Rhymes with Evil" blends disparate notes to comprise a complex whole. On the surface, "Evil" is the story of an imaginative father, Lathan (Andy Luther), who, after he loses his teaching job and his wife, Sara (Victoria Gilbert), leaves him, creates a vivid world replete with dolls, songs and rhymes for his young daughter (a poised, winning Caroline Heffernan). However, like the dark mythology underlying Lathan's Eden, there's more to the play than first appears.
A character in itself, Keith Pitts's elaborate set, a dreamlike house chockablock with doll-stuffed crannies, is perhaps "Evil's" most spot-on aspect. Luther, never over the top even as Lathan's carefully maintained world crumbles, partners confidently with the set, relating to it as if to an extension of himself. Unfortunately, most of Luther's human scene-partners are less engaging.
Andy Baldeschwiler as Jim, Lathan's rival for Sara's affection, inhabits each moment self-consciously, more aware of himself as an actor than of his character's intentions and soul. Opening the show opposite Jim, Gilbert initially appears to subscribe to the Baldeschwiler school of acting; however, in later scenes, nearly all of which she plays with Luther, she grows more truthful. Perhaps like the mirrors both metaphorical and concrete, which shimmer throughout the show, she merely reflects the image she faces. Another uneven aspect, Cynthia Castiglione, who plays Sara's sister Agnes, alternates between wooden and shrill. In the actor's defense, Traeger's vision of Agnes is flat at best, her lines choppy and her motives indistinct. In fact, although the playwright seems to envision Agnes's role as pivotal, her exact involvement with Lathan's downward spiral lacks impact, perhaps because the reason for Lathan's dismissal is never made clear.
Just as the fantastical elements within the unsettling show reflect the characters' multiple, shifting realities, the audience's understanding of "Evil" shifts too, as, in some sort of time-release theatrical alchemy, the play's grip tightens after the play itself concludes. While the pace frequently lags under the weight of overwrought dialogue, and many of the show's eerier elements rest on tired clichés (the lifeless old woman in the rocking chair, glassy-eyed puppets, a gender-shifting man), Traeger possesses a unique ability to slip through the cracks of one's conscious mind, taking up residence among our deeper, hidden fears. A play cannot be called a failure when, days after attending, one pauses on the threshold of darkened rooms, haunted by the image of a fractured father, at the top of a narrow staircase, poised and ready to pounce.
Reviewed by Centerstage!
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