Playwright: Joe Meno
At: House Theatre at the Viaduct
Phone: 773-251-2195; $15-$19
Runs through: July 1
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
The first thing we notice upon entering the auditorium is that the trademark stageside band consists of a patrician lady seated at a harpsichord, flanked by three demure maidens armed with violins. For this is not to be another noisy House productions party-jam, but a sweetly delicate tale of growing up in a disorderly world.
Adapted from his soon-to-be-released novel, Joe Meno's play speculates on the fate of child stars as they approach adulthood. In this case, the stars are teenage investigators, in the tradition of Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden and Encyclopedia Brown. The departure of Billy Argo, the 'boy detective' of the title, for college triggers a loss of innocence, not only for himself, but for his sister sleuth, Caroline, and their sidekick, Fenton. After a stretch in a sanitarium following Caroline's suicide, Billy tries to restore his cosmological equilibrium in a universe riddled with unsolvable mysteries.
The airplane hanger-sized room at the Viaduct is not wasted on its occupation by so intimate a story, however. Billy's adventures will take him on night-crawls through deserted toy shops replete with disembodied dolls and abandoned amusement parks featuring the requisite hall of mirrors. His meanderings through the city are suggested by a dioramatic ballet of koken-style characters bearing miniature buses and buildings. And while the suspected villains, sporting quasi-German or Russian accents, are mostly life-sized, we also have Jake Minton departing from his customary pretty-boy roles to revel in his portrayal of the batty Professor Von Golum, a grotesque vaguely resembling the late Brother Theodore ( or Riff-Raff from the Rocky Horror Show, for younger theatergoers ) .
This sort of material could easily veer into self-conscious precocity or soggy sentimentality—indeed, Meno himself appears undecided of his tone at times—but under Nathan Allen's capable direction, the House actors retain the humanity of their quirky personae. Lauren Vitz makes a suitably appealing damsel-in-distress as the mousy Penny Maple, Michael E. Smith projects a quiet authority as the avuncular Detective Brown, and Stephen Taylor creates a memorable personality in the squirrely co-worker Larry. Together they keep the sugar-and-spice quotient to a tolerable level.