Theater review by Alex Huntsberger
Regina Garcia’s set for Twilight Bowl transports the audience to small-town Wisconsin. Bedecked with wood panelling, bric-a-brac and Green Bay Packers gear aplenty, the titular bowling alley is rendered with the same degree of loving detail as the characters in Rebecca Gilman’s wonderfully perceptive new comedic drama: five local women (and one out-of-towner) navigating the boggy no-man’s-land between childhood and grown-upness. In the play’s world premiere at the Goodman, director Erica Weiss delivers a ruggedly affectionate production that is made special by a superb young cast.
The first scene is an awkward gathering on the night before the troubled Jaycee (Heather Chrisler) is set to go to prison; in attendance are her ex-friend Clarice (Hayley Burgess), her college-bound cousin Sam (Becca Savoy) and the devoutly Christian Sharlene (Anne E. Thompson). As Jaycee lashes out, rejecting attempts at kindness or sympathy, Gilman deftly sketches the contours of these women’s lives: They’re difficult but not unhappy, either, anchored by notions of family, work and home. In the following scenes—which introduce Clarice’s Twilight Bowl coworker Brielle (Mary Taylor) and Sam’s friend Maddy (Angela Morris, who lights up the stage with her livewire anxiousness)—Gilman widens her canvas to touch on larger issues. Racial resentment makes an appearance, and one character’s abortion leads to an intense confrontation; the final scene jumps forward to offer a touching, occasionally upsetting look at where these womens’ chips have fallen.
Although the show stumbles over a few cultural fault lines, Gilman maintains a balanced attitude, warm yet clear-eyed, to the six women—an approach echoed by Weiss’s production, which sits comfortably with the characters’ contradictions. Chrisler’s spiky, wounded performance is matched by those of her costars, particularly Thompson, Taylor and Morris. And in the play’s final scene, Savoy makes subtle adjustments to her performance that almost render Gilman’s script moot; her movements say it all. Few of the women in Twilight Bowl have promising futures ahead of them, but it’s hard to look at these actors and not think they’re destined for great things.
Goodman Theatre. By Rebecca Gilman. Directed by Erica Weiss. With Hayley Burgess, Heather Chrisler, Angela Morris, Becca Savoy, Mary Taylor, Anne E. Thompson. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission.