Playwright: Elizabeth Bagby. At: The Strange Tree Group at Signal Ensemble Theatre, 1802 W. Berenice Ave. Tickets: www.strangetree.org; $25; $15 students. Runs through: July 20
The Strange Tree Group is a company known for its eccentrically whimsical productionsboth in off-kilter storytelling and historically influenced production design styles.
Strange Tree Group's world premiere of Elizabeth Bagby's The Half-Brothers Mendelssohn at Signal Ensemble Theatre certainly maintains the company's high visual hallmarks. But the storytelling is lagging, which makes The Half-Brothers Mendelssohn a letdown since it doesn't live up its plotting potential.
Bagby's script toys with paradoxical questions of time travel. Namely if you went back in time, what would happen to you and the people you love if you slightly altered the course of history?
That's the dilemma facing Theo Mendelssohn (Stuart Ritter), a space and time-machine inventor mourning the loss of his father, Joseph (Joseph Stearns), in 1929. Theo believes that if he could prevent his mother, Alice (Kate Nawrocki), from abandoning his family back in 1908, his father would still be alive and his life would be happier.
But if Theo succeeds in his plans to keep his father from marrying his second wife, Henrietta (Jenifer Henry Starewich), then Theo's religiously minded half-brother, Nicholas (Brandon Ruiter), will essentially be killed off.
As expected, Herbert gets wind of Theo's plans tries to thwart him. And things don't go according to plan as the two half-brothers and their dim-witted gardener, Angelus (Andy Hager), get transported back in time. The fact that Theo and Herbert are both pursing the love of Margaret (Audrey Flegel), the daughter of clergyman Herbert (Cory Aiello), also provides extra stakes for the sparring siblings.
Unfortunately, Bagby's script doesn't emphasize the characters emotional needs and wants strongly or early enough to make you truly care about their paradoxical outcomes. Instead, Bagby's script zips through her characters' sticky time-traveling situations that aren't as craftily or comically complex as they could be.
Director Thrisa Hodits' casting is sometimes questionable in The Half-Brothers Mendelssohn. For instance, Hager betrays too much intelligence to honesty portray the not-so-bright Angelus (though the weak comic material he has to work with is tough to pull off). There also isn't much of a brotherly connection between Ruiter as Nicholas and Ritter's Theoeven at the bittersweet conclusion.
If the script isn't much to boast about, at least the look of The Half-Brothers Mendelssohn is quirky and fun, particularly the elaborate time machine concocted by set designer Kate Nawrocki (and a plethora of contributors) and audibly characterized by a fine sound design by Michael Huey. (Sci-fi fans of the time-traveling series Doctor Who will be able to pick out a TARDIS sample in the mix.)
Once again Strange Tree Group produces a fine visual example of whimsy with The Half-Brothers Mendelssohn. Too bad the story side of things sags this time out.