The Guthrie Theater's Singled Out: A Festival of Emerging Artists is a compact opportunity to savor some strong work from four local theaters. Benjamin McGovern, the theater's associate director of studio programming, has curated the festival with an eye to smaller independent troupes that have limited infrastructure, yet have the quality to merit another platform for their work.
I saw two popular and well observed pieces of American cultural history from recent Minnesota Fringe Festivals that have been remounted in the Guthrie's Dowling Studio.
The Four Humors troupe has vibrantly resurrected the genre and business model of a traveling medicine show during the Great Depression in the dazzling "Mortem Capiendum." A banner proclaiming "Prof. Saint Miracle" sets the tone, along with a banjo picker named Eustis (Brant Miller) who greets the audience. Miller's accompaniment nicely matches melodramatic ups and downs throughout that range from hilarious fake death scenes to kooky drag turns to sudden tap dances.
The Professor (Matt Spring) claims to have been brought back from death by a potion he's pushing known as Mortem Capiendum. When a country bumpkin dubiously named D'Artagnan Everyman (Jason Ballweber) comes forward to be healed of the shakes, all hell breaks loose. This trio captures the 1930s spirit with a charming vaudevillian acting style.
Sandbox Theatre takes the overwrought practice of spoofing 1950s sitcoms and makes it interesting with "June of Arc." A striking Heather Stone plays a depressed June Cleaver of "Leave It to Beaver." Playwright Ryan Hill muses on what is not said in the limbo of the white picket fence: post-traumatic stress sprung from World War II and Korea, June's erotic memories of a dead soldier, staged commercial breaks that savagely underscore the manipulation of advertising.
Director Lisa Moreira's superb cast masters an absurdist physical style. The men speak in grunts rather than words and sometimes fall over abruptly. Mike Hallenbeck's sound design reflects a sunny '50s image, while the blacks, whites and reds of Hill's set and Derek Miller's props point to a darker dimension beneath that image.
Lamb Lays With Lions' company-created production of "The Black Arts" and the New Theatre Group's "American Sexy" by Trista Baldwin are also part of Singled Out.
