Review: A Storyteller's Delight

Secrets, secrets are no fun, unless you share with everyone! Every family has some skeletons. Some dark past that stays hidden away until someone gets curious. Set tucked away in the titular state, Brian Watkins’ astoundingly mighty Wyoming brings a formally shattered family together on a day of thanks as a healed wound is ripped open once again. Produced by the hit machine Lesser America, Wyoming is a gripping saga of family and the power of keeping truths away.
Played in the mid 1990s, Brian Watkins’ Wyoming shares the story of the reemergence of a long departed brother who mysteriously returns to town, forcing a family to question a life-defining instance that happened over twenty years earlier. Broken into two distinct parts, the first part of the play is filled with exposition, told through smart theatrical devices. The second part is an action packed dinner where an innocent party game leads to truths being revealed. From a structural standpoint, Wyoming utilizes some pretty standard devices, but the way Watkins boosts them is smart and fresh. From flashbacks to a monologue, the array of storytelling is perfect for this mystery play. Brian Watkins is a wordsmith. His marvelous storytelling talents are on full display as he keeps you glued to the edge of your seats, waiting with bated breath for the ultimate reveal. The moment the word game at dinner begins, each sentence that the family creates leads to such a fantastic reveal.

photo courtesy of Hunter Canning

To bring Wyoming to life, Lesser America has assembled a cast filled with company favorites along with seasoned pros. As April, the curious sister and daughter who hopes to unite the family, Sarah Sokolovic is simply stunning. Sokolovic has an innate ability to blend humor into her performance, all while remaining firm and grounded. Sokolovic is truly the glue that keeps the family and play together. Daniel Abeles and Nate Miller as Tom and Grant respectively have a natural connection as performers that made playing brothers easy. Their tag team act blended well with Sokolovic’s April. Carter Hudson does a great job as the smokey Hank in the flashback scenes. His chemistry with Laura Ramadei’s Maggie is exquisite. While Laura Ramadei does beautiful work as young Maggie, there is a small layer missing as she transitions to play the matriarch. The age dynamic between mother and daughter was lacking. She does transform and finds some beautiful moments in the dinner scene, there was more to be desired.
Watkins’ script is near flawless and Danya Taymor’s direction was equally brilliant. The rollercoaster of momentum was expertly maintained by Taymor. She found the moments when the story needed to take time and when it needed to keep moving. Taymor’s staging throughout was spot on. In the first part, keeping Edward T. Morris’ rundown world stationary allowed Taymor to blend into each scene and memory with ease. By mixing present with past, Masha Tsmiring’s lighting design allowed for some beautiful stage pictures. The soundtrack that Robin Pecknold and Neal Morgan composed fit beautifully into Watkins’ world. It was subtle and served the play well.
Wyoming is one of those simple plays that hits you. It mixes an array of emotions that allow to feel as if you are part of the family. Brian Watkins knows how to tell a story. And with a top notch team surrounding in, his story is even stronger. Wyoming may be the best thing from Lesser America yet.

Spotlight On...Brian Watkins

Name: Brian Watkins

Hometown: Parker, CO

Education: DePaul and Northern Colorado

Why theater?: It's live and completely unlike any other art form. The flesh and blood aspect of it never gets old. And it's very hard to get right.

Tell us about Wyoming: It's a play about a family that's trying to avoid the past. Their estranged and silent brother is spotted at a hometown diner twenty years after a confounding childhood crime and his return uncovers some buried memories and unspoken bounties, hatching a quite eventful Thanksgiving. It's a ensemble piece that explores the places and people we come from and the fragile power that memory holds over family. We have an excellent team all around with a cast that will knock your socks off. The play is heavily reliant upon music as a tool for understanding Time, so we've enlisted original music to be composed by Robin Pecknold and Neal Morgan, who have done some beautiful work. Robin is my cousin, and so it was a joy to collaborate with him on this, as his sound is an absolutely a perfect fit for the world/tone of the play. Add some great designers and the stellar work of the producers at Lesser America and I think we've made a great night of theatre.

What inspired you to write Wyoming?: I'm interested in the elusiveness of memory and the stakes that it holds in our relationship to family history. This is directly affected by the land our family occupies, and I wanted to write something that contrasted the permanence of that land with the temporality of its inhabitants. We all have a connection to the past, and I find it's typically more mysterious than concretely fathomable. This is the flint that sparks the dramatic action in Wyoming (I hope).

What kind of theater speaks to you? What or who inspires you as an artist?: Theatre that is muscular and unexpected and stories filled with characters whose choices are oddly defined by environment. I love plays that see the stage as a kind of altar for Americans shaped by the history of the land they live on, or moonstruck by the culture and heritage they keep. It's always shifting but one thing that's remained constant is a continual fascination with where people are from (i.e. Place). For me, Place is the gathering agent yet totem of individuality that shapes society. In it's best form I think this expresses a distinctly American conflict, that is, characters driven by instincts that are at once territorial and transient. Some of my favorite artists that do this are Bruce Nauman, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Sam Shepard, Faulkner.

If you could work with anyone you’ve yet to work with, who would it be?: Tough question, as the people I'm working with right now at Lesser America are some pretty great folks. People that can do more with less are the best kind of artists in my eyes.

What show have you recommended to your friends?: More recently, Scenes From a Marriage at NYTW and Father Comes Home From The War at the Public. Jez Butterworth's The River was pretty damn good too. I'll see anything he writes.

Who would play you in a movie about yourself and what would it be called?: Jim Varney, "Ernest Goes to Camp"

If you could go back in time and see any play or musical you missed, what would it be?: I would have loved to see the original production of Long Days Journey Into Night

What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?: Barbecue/beer.

If you weren’t working in theater, you would be _____?: Probably writing in some other capacity.

What’s up next?: Wyoming plays with Lesser America until the end of the month so come see it while you can. Then I'm headed off to Colorado for a reading of the play with Local Theatre in Boulder as part of their Lab series.