Playwright: Jayme McGhan . At: Mortar Theatre at Athenaeum Theatre Studio 1, 2936 N. Southport. Phone: 800-982-2787; $15-$20. Runs through: June 19
There are a lot of things that just don't make palpable sense in Mortar Theatre's Mother Bear.
Jayme McGhan's world premiere drama aims to be edgy with characters like murderous trucker gang members and frequent outbursts of stage violence complete with flowing stage blood. But in the end, Mother Bear strangely turns out to be just sweetly nonsensical despite its menacing and conspiracy-laden sheen.
McGhan starts things off on the wrong foot by setting his drama in Green River, Utah. For a state that is more than 60 percent Mormon, it's unforgivable that McGhan makes no mention whatsoever of the LDS faith and how it affects the show's violent yet also very religious characters (even if the play's Coyote Pass truck stop setting is a notorious members-only territory for the "Disciples" trucker gang).
McGhan also conjures up characters that lack credibility.
Take for instance the former corporate-lawyer-turned-trucker-union-organizer named Freely who also happens to be a die-hard pacifist who keeps coming back for more despite repeated death threats and bouts of physical harm. Though Brian Plocharczyk offers up the best-acted performance in Mother Bear as Freely, even he can't make his character's atonement ideals make sense in context of the play's life-or-death situations.
As the title gang leader of the disciples, Jim Farrell offers up a strangely wooden and hesitant performance that comes off more like he's reciting his lines than fully embodying them (this same acting fault also affects Maria Enriquez's performance as the tough-as-nails trucker Delia who is desperate to join the Disciples). Farrell's lumbering physical stage presence also doesn't convey the swagger needed for a man who holds so much underworld power.
Much better performances come from J. Kingsford Goode as the blasé seen-it-all truck stop owner Vera and from Dustin Whitehead as the crazed and snarling new Disciples recruit Bones. Both bring some much-needed humor to the show, though they could respectively dial-up and dial-down some of the emotion now and then.
Director Jason Boat does what he can with McGhan's flawed script, and I wish he might have exercised more control over the excesses in the writing (like the drag-out fight scene between Bones and Delia that contains far too much dialogue amid Elizabeth Styles' violent fight choreography).
From out-of-place props (like the copy of The New York Times business section) to bizarre head-scratching character motivations, Mother Bear is filled with many moments that will prompt audiences to think, "That's just not right." The devil is truly in the details, and Mother Bear is bedeviled with far too many wrong notes both big and small.
