FORT COLLINS — The Butterfly Effect posits that the mere fluttering of wings in Mongolia starts slight changes in the atmosphere that might build into a tornado on the other side of the world.
It’s a lousy time to be talking tornadoes in Fort Collins, but the chaos theory works as an analogy for the slow economic death of small towns all across America. And that’s poignantly captured in Nagle Jackson’s surprising and deeply human play, “Bernice/Butterfly: A Two-Part Invention” at the Bas Bleu Theatre.
Jackson wrote his companion one-acts in 2003 as a showcase for Denver Center Theatre Company stalwarts Kathleen Brady and Jamie Horton. They created a smart, lovely and funny character study of two insignificant small-town Kansans reduced to near-nothingness by fluttering forces outside their control.
Consider the Butterfly Effect in reverse, and you’ll get a good sense of the slowly softening impact any subsequent staging is likely to have on audiences. Me? I wouldn’t want to follow Horton or Brady down an escalator, so more power to Frances Burns (alternating with Chip Winn Wells) and Bruce Bergquist. Their worthy effort doesn’t reach the same gale force, but it kicks up plenty of dust.
That’s thanks mostly to Burns, who helms the superior first act as Bernice, a waitress slinging hash and gossip during the breakfast rush at the O-Kay Diner. Her customers are implied — such is a playwright’s license — but through her monologue, we come to know a multitude of townies and reasons their town is shriveling.
It starts with a flutter — an Army base closes, an old-town hardware store cedes to a Wal-Mart, and so on. Before long, there’s no movie theater, no hospital, not enough kids to keep schools open. With no economic engine, an inevitable exodus leaves behind living ghosts like Bernice, who have no remaining purpose.
It’s as close to a perfectly written act as you’ll find, down to its heartbreaking, gasp-worthy surprise ending, the kind that just makes you love theater.
These are essentially twin radio plays — you learn what you need to learn by what is said, not necessarily by what you see. Jackson borrowed the second half of his title (“A Two-Part Invention”) from Bach because these are both journeys of discovery.
But the second piece doesn’t stand up as well. While Bernice makes for one gigantic metaphor, Randall’s downfall doesn’t carry the same universal resonance. His started with an impulsive act as a child, one that has built into a tempest in his old age. But it’s his cross to bear.
Randall is reduced to standing alone in a boarding house, practicing his speech to the American Philosophical Society. But all is not right here — what he’s spewing are hilariously angry academic theories on randomness that apply not to science but to his own unrealized life.
This piece dips its toes into some difficult sexual content, which makes Bergquist’s performance seem all the more courageous considering he’s a retired Lutheran pastor.
The wicket here is that you’ve got an actor performing before a live audience — but the character he plays is addressing an imaginary audience. Bergquist gets off to a great start, but he eventually succumbs to playing to his actual audience, which takes us out of Randall’s head. That makes his journey seem more like an actual speech.
It’s darkly compelling terrain, but it doesn’t add much to the dialogue.
Burns is a tough act to follow. But while enough good can’t be said about her pace; her poignant, hangdog eyes; her rapid-fire comic timing, her performance is lessened a bit by a recurring tendency to “act out” certain words in an unnatural fashion. When she speaks of driving, for example, she simulates steering a car. That’s movement for movement’s sake, which reminded me of Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry’s famous advice: “Movement is wonderful — stillness is everything.” Burns and her director/husband, Morris Burns, should trust that here.
There’s also an incongruously cruel streak evident in a surprise third character. And it’s especially unfortunate that Jackson has made a slight alteration to the final page of his script since 2003 — and not for the better. It’s made the ending a bit anticlimactic.
Quibbles aside, this is a wonderful, touching play.
It’s easy to focus solely on the butterfly analogy and its many applications here, but this simple-seeming play is about so much more. It’s a veritable treatise on failure, both of individuals and small-town America itself.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Bernice/Butterfly: A Two-Part Invention” *** (out of four stars)
Companion one-acts. Bas Bleu Theatre, 401 Pine St., Fort Collins. Written by Nagle Jackson. Directed by Morris Burns. Starring Frances Burns (rotating with Chip Winn Wells ), and Bruce Bergquist. Through June 29. 90 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays; also 7:30 p.m. Thursdays June 19 and 26. $12-$19 (2-for-1 June 6-8). 970-498-8949 or .
