Real patriotism demonstrated at The New Space

Real patriotism demonstrated at The New Space

by Miryam Gordon - SGN A&E Writer GOD OF HELL BY SAM SHEPARD THE NEW SPACE THROUGH FEBRUARY 23 What would a play be like if Sam Shepard, the quirky, charged playwright, wrote a play about current politics? What might you expect? Well, he wrote a play in 2004 that was designed to try to actually influence the election of George W. Bush to a second term. Essentially, he brings us a couple in Wisconsin, living on farmland, far away from main roads, cut off from even occasional visitors in the dead of winter. An old schoolchum of Frank's shows up and needs to stay for a while. The next day, a creepy CIA/FBI/IRS type shows up at the house asking questions and doesn't give his name. In the course of this taut one-act, life goes from the mundane to the extreme. The old chum is really escaped from somewhere he can't reveal and the creepy guy has tracked him down to return him to his life of & could it be torture? If you are excited by extremes and are tired of theater not really "saying" anything, this is YOUR play! Get over to The New Space, a small space in Shoreline struggling to find audiences for its deftly produced plays. And hurry. It ends soon. Are you worried about the loss of habeus corpus? Warrantless wiretapping? Government spying? Secret doings at military installations? So is Shepard. Patriotism run wild? Patriotic cookies, anyone? You've never seen the like. David Ledingham plays the solid farmer Frank, and Kara Whitney is his practical Wisconsin housewife Emma. The creepy guy (whose name turns out eventually to be Welch) is played with great scene-crunching energy by Jason Adkins and Geoff Finney plays the hapless and scared Haynes. All four actors are great at establishing the normalcy in the beginning of the play and ratchet up the shenanigans with full energy as the play goes on. Kara, as Emma, holds the play together and begins to stand up for herself toward the end. Chris Fisher, Artistic Director of The New Space, directs this production with a sure hand, as they say. For more information, go to www.thenewspace.org or call 206-650-9448. Comments on reviews go to sgncritic@gmail.com.