nothin New Haven Theater Company Receives The Words… | New Haven Independent

New Haven Theater Company Receives The Words of Albean

Allan Appel Photo

A cult has been identified in New Haven, thus far unknown to authorities. All we know of it is the following: This (above) is its emblem and name, Albean. At their weekly meetings, adherents have been sighted wearing long robes. At initiations the new acolyte strips to the waist — women can retain their bras — and the leader, a 30-something named Tyler, draws three black concentric circles on their naked torsos.

Whenever they speak to each other, on matters as trivial as announcing that a vaginal itch has finally been cured, the exchange concludes with the earnestly whispered words, With love.”

For more information on whether this group is dangerous, silly, or both, you’ll have to check out The Cult, the latest offering from The New Haven Theater Company (NHTC).

Shaboo as Tyler, with the cult’s special stick.

The play, written and directed by the company’s resident playwright, Drew Gray, runs May 28 to 30 and June 3 to 6, at the NHTC’s home base, the cavernous back rooms of the English Building Markets on Chapel Street.

At the company’s first full read-through recently, Gray said the work isn’t commenting on the phenomenon of cults in a direct way at all. The cult is a construction,” he said, to bring together characters he is interested in in order to see how they interact.

A lot of playwriting is finding an excuse to get a lot of people together,” Gray said.

The usual place you get people together to make a play is in the family unit — think everything from Oedipus to Lear to Streetcar.

A cult, like a gang, is the same kind of grouping, capable of giving rise to conflict. Or at least that is Gray’s theoretical premise for creating his culty family.

The characters in the play might have a need for all the unconditional, loopy love of Tyler and Albean. Their problems are not otherworldly, however; they are scarily quotidian. (Click on the play arrow for a taste of what an Albean meeting is like.) Tommy has a cousin who is dying. Roger, Tyler’s boss, has just been dumped by his girlfriend. Jared has just received a cancer diagnosis. Perky Sally has just cured that irritation down under.

Gray’s (pictured with the cult’s baby doll) previous full length with NHTC was a two-hander, The Magician. By evidence of the script and the run-through, he is juggling this larger cast of 11 characters deftly.

That is partly because he likes them. Not their weaknesses and neediness, which are all too evident, but their quirks. And what better way to see those quirks than to toss the characters into the tank with a cool, handsome, confused dude like Tyler?

For the first half of the play, the audience is led to believe Tyler (Christian Shaboo) has been channeling cosmic forces that drive him to buy a farm. There he will ultimately be able to bring his devotees — there are maybe half a dozen at most in the flock — to live a life of love and caring that is absent from the big city day-to-day grind.

Only later do we learn how this farm is connected to Tyler’s brother — and a deep rift in his own family that may explain Tyler’s behavior. But by that time Gray wants you to be really invested in these characters, including Tyler. Their reaching out for community, however wacky, he has called heroic.

The cast gets in the cult mood for the first meeting.

Gray is writing an electronic score to accompany the culty doings, which he describes as not spooky, but naturalistic. From what I saw, I’d say it’s both. When you mix those ingredients with love,” you also get comedy, which is how the show is billed. In addition, when it became apparent during rehearsals that some props not in the script might be needed, such as cult dolls and a special kind of stick that a devotee clutches at the moment of public confession, Gray went home and created those. He designed the robes as well.

I asked Gray whether Tyler himself really believes that he is channeling forces of Albean, of love, for the sake of himself and his followers, or whether everyone needs a little therapy. Gray was noncommital. It’s just one of the questions the play asks.

The Cult runs May 28 to 30 and June 3 to 6 at the English Building Markets. Other cast members include J. Kevin Smith, Mallory Pelligrino, Deena Nicol, Erich Green, Timothy Smith, Rick Beebe, Lauren Young, Katelyn Marshall, Sandra Rodriguez, and Trevor Williams. Click here for more information and tickets. With love.”

Sign up for our morning newsletter

Don't want to miss a single Independent article? Sign up for our daily email newsletter! Click here for more info.


Post a Comment

Commenting has closed for this entry

Comments

There were no comments