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.