A Honey of an Anklet

Along with economic dislocation, the 1970s are surfacing as a minor theme of the festival. That’s the setting for Allison Gregory’s very strong Wild Horses, a one-woman play in flashbacks to the Me Decade and its music of rebellion. Kate Udall portrays seven-plus characters in the life of a fractious 13-year-old girl. Udall’s young girl finds a couple of sketchy friends, raids her parents’ liquor supply, begins to understand the fraught system of human physical relations, and hatches a futile plot to rescue abused horses from a nearby ranch. The coming of age story has shades of Equus set in the Southern California foothills. Udall’s vocal choices are at times difficult to distinguish when three characters are speaking quickly, but she gives each a distinguishing gesture to keep things sorted out. Physically, she is even more accomplished—for instance, a darkly comic scene on a water bed—and especially when she conjures leading a horse with nothing but a looped belt. She gamely climbs on the roof of a vintage van to re-enact her girl’s escape from a bedroom window, even though the set piece could use some serious reinforcement. And she’s quick with an ad lib, whether it’s a bit of costume gone wrong or she’s gotten ahead of her story.

• Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
• Wild Horses, by Allison Gregory, directed by Courtney Sale

The Festival experiments with an immersive experience in Studio 112, seating audience members around picnic tables in the playing area (on backless benches, please note) and selling concessions from a side window let into the aforementioned van.

Welcome to Fear City, set in the Bronx of 1977, tells a straightforward, earnest story of economic uncertainty, racial profiling, random violence, and misguided choices. It’s much in the vein of Lorraine Hansberry. The 1970s dance break is entertaining, but perhaps that’s not playwright Kara Lee Corthron’s artistic objective. She frames the story with some fourth wall-breaking devices that are less than successful. At points, the characters speak their subtext in an exaggerated shuck an’ jive that is gratuitous. And the coda, a polyrhythmic chant, leaves us feeling a tad manipulated.

There’s a subplot that develops towards the end of the first act—is this a flirtation, or an incitement to arson?—that, unfortunately, goes nowhere.

• Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
• Welcome to Fear City, by Kara Lee Corthron, directed by Nicole A. Watson

Emily Townley brings considerable skill to the role of Paige, the long-suffering mother of a dysfunctional family in this preachy satire with themes of gender fluidity and the fight between chaos and control. She delivers a rainbow of colors in her line readings; of particular note is Paige’s signature phrase, “It’s fantastic,” when reality is anything but. Alas, the events that unfold constitute little more than a revenge fantasy.

Misha Kachman’s first act set is a treat, dressed in glitter, googly eyes, feather boas, and TP sculptures, and a smiley-face throw pillow. It’s as if a tornado blew through a Michael’s.

• HIR, by Taylor Mac, directed by Shana Cooper, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington