By Dwight Casimere
A hidden-in-plain-sight box of cremains, a footlocker of ancient farm tools and a rusting antique Winchester rifle are clues that are dropped like breadcrumbs in the forest are the plot points to frequent Goodman collaborator Rebecca Gilman’s
newest play Swing State in its World Premiere.
Running now through Nov. 13, with two performances added on Election Night, Nov. 8 and a matinee Nov. 10, the play examines the post-COVID political divide through the eyes of citizens of a small Wisconsin town which is a microcosm of the nation’s great cultural and political divide.
Directed by Robert Falls, taking the helm for the first time since relinquishing his role as artistic director, gives his sterling cast plenty of room to breathe life into their complex characters. The pace is measured, allowing each line to sink in and register.
Goodman veteran Mary Beth Fisher is Peg. Fisher appeared in three previous Rebecca Gilman plays and her performance here proves the value of her previous experience.
Bubba Weiler, seen in Goodman’s Talking Pictures and The Actor is Ryan, the troubled former fentanyl addict and ex con Peg attempts to rescue from his own demons. It is quickly apparent that Peg is just as much in need of psychological rescue as her young charge. Their kitchen table banter shows them alternately parrying cutting emotional digs, then taking turns licking each other’s mutually inflicted wounds.
Much of the plot centers on Peg’s efforts to resurrect the shattered remnants of her own sanity and sense of self-worth following the unexpected death of her husband in a McGuffin-like search for his stolen antique farm tools. Her half-hearted effort to track down the pilfered footlocker is a metaphor of her own attempts at grasping some meaning from the illusive emotional ether. Even more troubling is the disappearance of his Winchester rifle, a silent companion on many a failed hunting trip, which, like the cremains box, spears to have been hiding in plain sight all along.
These are the vehicles that drive the plot of Swing State toward to its inexorable conclusion.
The lives of all of the protagonists in Swing State are intertwined, as are their fates, in a compounding way that only small-town life can achieve. Gilman’s deftly constructed play appears like one of those optical illusion paintings that you stare at for moments on end in order to finally have its 3 dimensional subject reveal itself.
Kirstin Fitzgerald is the taciturn Sheriff Kris and Anne E. Thompson is the quixotic Deputy Dani, who is quick on the draw as judge, jury and ultimately, executioner.
It’s pretty obvious from the start of Swing State that there won’t be a happy ending. Like life, even in its darkest moments, there are glimmers of hope and humanity. If you listen closely to the verbal imagery in Gilman’s shimmering script, laced with vivid ornithological and botanical references of rural Wisconsin, you’ll find the seeds for the soul’s blossoming and ultimate redemption. At the Goodman in the intimate Owen Theatre through Nov. 13. Visit GoodmanTheatre.org for more.
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