Theater review: A painful aftermath

A husband's anguish after his wife has been raped and murdered is examined in "Touch." Urban Samurai Productions, whose play selections typically wrestle with dark subject matter, is offering a spare and heartfelt staging of Toni Press-Coffman's 1999 drama at the Cedar Riverside People's Center in Minneapolis.

"Touch" is an intimate portrait of Kyle Kalke (Matthew Greseth), whose wife was randomly raped and murdered by two men late one night near their home. Zoe, never portrayed by an actress, is only referred to.

The play's first half sets up a story of idyllic love between polar opposites related in monologues by Kyle. He's cerebral, a linear thinker, fascinated with astronomy. Zoe is a spontaneous free spirit, drawn to the stars from an astrological perspective. At times Press-Coffman's astronomy/astrology parallels feel contrived.

Nonetheless, the playwright piercingly observes how lack of closure can devastate the lives of surviving loved ones. That's the primary focus of the play's second half. Kyle blames himself for not preventing Zoe from going out the night of her death. The prolonged period before her attackers are caught brings him torturous uncertainty about just how she suffered in her final moments. Law enforcement is shown as systematically callous. The scene in which Kyle and his buddy, Benny (Nate Hessburg), discover Zoe's corpse is utterly spectral.

Director Paul von Stoetzel keeps things spare, with minimal props and furniture. Joshua Iley's lighting is fittingly stark. Unfortunately, Von Stoetzel and Greseth have not explored the nuanced range of emotional colors within Kyle's grieving process. Too many passages hit the same intense pitch emotionally and vocally, undercutting the vulnerability Greseth reveals so beautifully in the first half.

Mykel Pennington evokes a luminously hardbitten presence in Kathleen, a sex worker who guides Kyle toward healing his emotional wounds. Hessburg affably mixes gruffness and empathy as supportive Benny. Marcia Svaleson endears as Serena, Zoe's sister, who laments Kyle's withdrawal from life.

John Townsend is a Minneapolis writer.