After 10 years of presenting challenging, diverse and provocative new work, Workhaus Collective says farewell to Twin Cities audiences with Carson Kreitzer's "Lasso of Truth," a swan song that packs a wallop.
The play, produced with Walking Shadow Theatre Company, spans several decades and spins the concept of female superhero Wonder Woman into a dizzying number of directions as it ostensibly explores her origin story.
One plot line revolves around the comic's creator, William Marston, and his home life, a cozy ménage à trois complete with bondage games. Marston, played with bombast and sly humor by Stephen Yoakam, credits his wife (Annie Enneking) and live-in grad student (Meghan Kreidler) with providing the inspiration for Wonder Woman. The threesome's convoluted relationship plays out against a backdrop of projected cartoon graphics created by Jacob Stoltz, lending a hilariously heightened sense of melodrama to an already eccentric blend of domesticity and eroticism.
A complementary plot line set in the 1990s muses on the continuing impact of Wonder Woman as a role model, as McKenna Kelly-Eiding and John Riedlinger wrangle over a first-edition comic book. Yet another, and somewhat extraneous, thread involves Gloria Steinem's campaign to restore Wonder Woman as an icon of female power.
This piece could easily unravel as it follows a dozen different trails in search of Wonder Woman's essence. Instead, thanks to a uniformly strong cast and Leah Cooper's crisp direction, Kreitzer's complex and daring creation plays out like a tightrope act — taut and dangerous, but breathtaking as well.
Lisa Brock is a Twin Cities theater critic.
