If you want to find new works and new ideas in the summer theater season, you sometimes need to travel a fair distance. On two consecutive Thursdays this month, that quest has taken me to the outlandishly quaint town of Ridgefield, where Thrown Stone Theatre Company has holed up in a large room at the Ridgefield Conservatory of Dance.
This is Thrown Stone’s second season. The company specializes in new plays. This year those are “Where All Good Rabbits Go” by Karina Cochran and “The Arsonists” by Jacqueline Goldfinger. (Goldfinger is known in Connecticut as the winner of the 2017 Yale Drama Series Prize, for her play “Bottle Fly.”) “Rabbits” premiered last year in San Francisco and “Arsonists” premiered last year in Philadelphia, but they are new to New England, and Thrown Stone has found its own special way of staging them.
The plays are presented in a repertory fashion, rotating in and out of the same space, though they have different casts, sets and directors. Thrown Stone’s co-founders Jonathan Winn and Jason Peck are actively involved, Winn as the director of “The Arsonists” and Peck as the lead actor in “Where All Good Rabbits Go.”
The only real link between the two plays in this short, intense summer season are the members of the design team. It’s refreshing to see a small company lavishing so much attention on sets, lights and costumes, especially for plays which some companies would gladly (and wrongly) give a cheap, minimalist staging. Scenic designer Fufan Zhang (who designed the awe-striking set for “Seven Guitars” for Yale Rep in 2016) has created magnificent environments for these two very different shows. “The Arsonists” takes place in a battered swamp shack made of splintered wooden boards, while “Where All Good Rabbits Go” looks like a black-and-white New Yorker cartoon of a kitchen and bathroom stretched into three dimensions. Both sets draw you in immediately, which makes bringing these tricky scripts to life that much easier for the actors.
My strong reaction to “The Arsonists” as it rocked and reeled on that dilapidated shack of a set was “How nice that someone else is writing Sam Shepard plays now that Sam Shepard is dead.” The play is a physical and philosophical sparring match between a father and daughter, infused with supernatural elements, drinking, swearing, fire imagery and long interludes of live music. The tunes are expertly played and sung, in a Southern folk style, by the two-person cast of Emma Factor and Nick Plakias on guitar and banjos. Besides the stringed instruments, the performers wield an ax, a weaving tool and bits of string. Those are the kinds of props which have the potential to go horribly wrong, and they keep you focused on the stage during the talkiest bits. There’s even a trap door. What works remarkably well is the music. The songs are lengthy and intrusive, yet they’re as valuable as any of the characters’ sharped-tongue speeches — even in a drama with such disarming lines as “You talk like ‘McCabe and Mrs. Miller’!”
“Where All Good Rabbits Go” is directed by Cyrus Newitt, who also designed the creative lighting for both the Thrown Stone shows. This one is a contemporary absurdist drama with major comic and romantic elements, about a man who is turning into a rabbit. It’s tempting to compare it to the Eugene Ionesco classic “Rhinoceros” (in which man becomes rhino), but Karina Cochran is not working a political metaphor here. She’s musing on the grieving process and how we deal with gradual yet expected deterioration of our bodies and minds. Transformation into rabbits turns out to be a universal, unwanted phenomenon that “everyone” undergoes. A farmer named Walter, played by Jason Peck, is afflicted in the very first scene with a fluffy bunny tail, and over the course of play he sprouts white hair and long ears. His wife Julia (Alexandra Bazan) tries to keep her spirits up but complains to her brother (and Walter’s doctor) Dorn that “I can’t watch my husband eat his own poop.” Dorn is played by Mike Boland, a steadily working and highly versatile Connecticut actor who recently appeared as one of the angry “people” in “Enemy of the People” at Yale Rep and as a clownish political lackey in “Unnecessary Farce” at Playhouse on Park. Boland wisely underplays here as a voice of reason in a rabbit-infested world.
“Where All Good Rabbits Go” is overlong at 90 minutes, cluttered with unnecessary flashbacks and details that slowly undo the play’s already tenuous inner logic. I’d also argue that rabbits aren’t a good example of a worsening medical condition — they’re just too cute, alert and lively. This is proven by an unexpected and attention-getting special effect late in the play.
Both of Thrown Stone’s 2018 offerings have their shortcomings, but that’s largely because their playwrights are really going for it. Some of the explorations and experiments lead to big emotional payoffs that overwhelm any quibbles. Both shows are strongly acted, and greatly enhanced by captivating designs. Colors swirl. Flames crackle. Bunnies hop.
This is just the sort of thing I needed to break up a summer of musicals, outdoor Shakespeare shows and old-school comedies. It’s more than a stone’s throw from Hartford, but Thrown Stone is worth the trip.
THE THROWN STONE season continues through Aug. 4. “Where All Good Rabbits Go” by Karina Cochran has its remaining performances on July 20, 21 and 27 and Aug. 2, 3 and 4 at 8 p.m.; July 22 at 3 p.m.; July 8 at 4 p.m.; and July 29 at 7 p.m. “The Arsonists” by Jacqueline Goldfinger has its remaining performances July 21 at 4 p.m.; July 22 at 7 p.m.; July 26 and 28 at 8 p.m.; and July 29 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $59, $49 for seniors and $29 for ages 29 and under. 203-442-1714 and thrownstone.org.
This story was corrected to remove a design credit attributed to Fufan Zhang. The work being referenced was in fact by a different designer of the same name.
