Review: Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) by Poison Apple Initiative
by Michael Meigs

You know that this single mom and her eleven-year-old daughter are in deep trouble from the very start, because the building tells you so.  Michael Slefinger as The Apartment is an engimatic presence, miffed by their inattention,  wearing a butterfly bow tie that confirms his nostalgia for long-ago elegance.  His is the first voice we hear, and he hovers in this action as something between a Greek chorus and a malevolent haunting. 

 

 

Playwright Sheila Callaghan came out of the resolutely fringe theatre in New York City, but Crumble feels very Austin.  Three women inhabit this world where stress, loss and weary real life intersect with fantasy, apparitions and unexpected burning images. It's magical realism and thriller combined.

 

 

Karen Alvarado is the deeply fatigued mom, abruptly left as a single parent  when her husband died a year earllier in an apparently senseless household accident.  Her eleven-year-old daughter Janice has gone near psychotic in reaction.  The mom's own sister, Barbara, is chatty and supportive, but we gradually come to understand that Barbara may be the most flipped-out of the trio.

 

That's the merest sketch of the central three, drawn in retrospect.  Playwright Callaghan is a mischief maker with a gift for glinting dark humor.  She reveals the characters gradually for us, with unexpected twists.  Young Janice, alone in her room, creates a whole puppet theatre of verbal violence with her dolls. Her aunt Barbara uses that appalling, blinking, we're-just-girls-together tone and tries to prove that there's an adolescent crush in there somewhere.  Each of the three spins gently away into fantasy dialogues with dream figures or surrogates.  Only mid-way does the playwright reveal the details of the fatal accident and then start an intrigue ticking.

 

Director Bastion Carboni recruited a superb cast.  Karen Alvarado's portrayal of the central figure -- as bereaved wife, bewildered mother, dependent sister -- is complex, contained and deeply emotional.  Natalie Kabenjian as the childless Barbara has a brightness that borders on hysteria, with the directness one expects of a child.  Though she's an adult actress, Elizabeth Biggers as young Janice is completely convincing. She is wary of the others, vulnerable and intent on the small part of the world that she believes she can control. 

 

 

The crisis and turning point occurs in a scene late in the 90-minute piece, in which young Janice earnestly prepares for her mother a Christmas gift and escape, as Alvarado follows her patiently, tentatively, with painful incomprehension.  The Apartment -- well aware of the danger -- attends them, mirroring our own tense attention.

 

 

Crumble draws you into its world and its imaginings.  It's deft, character-driven, and, ultimately, life-affirming.  Thanks to Poison Apple for finding it and staging it.  Recommended!

 

 

Review by Cate Blouke for the Statesman's Austin360 "Seeing Things" blog, December 8

Review by Avimaan Syam for the Austin Chronicle, December 15

Review by Cleve Weise for austinist.com, December 15

 

EXTRAS

Feature by Robert Faires in the Austin Chronicle, November 24

Feature by Dan Solomon at Austinist.com, December 1

Feature by Cate Blouke at Austin Statesman, December 2

 

Click to view program for Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) by Poison Apple Initiative

 

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Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake)
by Sheila Callaghan
Poison Apple Initiative