Theatre Company of Lafayette continues to expand the presumed boundaries of community theater with its original exploration of the missing link between Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln.
Both giants were born on the same date 200 years ago, and the ambitious “Separated at Birth: The Lincoln/Darwin Plays” spreads over two nights in performance.
Annually since 2006, the company has commissioned local playwrights to explore topics such as Frankenstein and great American road trips. “Separated at Birth” netted one full-length play, Leroy Leonard’s “Monkey Men,” which plays in repertory with the lighthearted “Abe and Chuck (Way) Off Broadway,” an evening of seven short plays.
“Monkey Men” (not reviewed) recounts one of the greatest hoaxes of all time: When counterfeit bones of the supposed “missing link” were discovered in England in 1912, it sent scientists scurrying in wrong directions. It took 41 years for “The Piltdown Man” to be revealed as a masterful forgery.
“Abe and Chuck,” as the title suggests, isn’t aiming for high art. The area playwrights are clearly aiming for entertainment over enlightenment. None of the plays puts forth a convincing case that there is all that much to the Darwin-Lincoln connection save for the cross-oceanic coincidence of their birth dates. A recurring transitional gag even has Alfred Lord Tennyson and Edgar Allen Poe comically bemoaning the other historical greats (including themselves) also born in 1809 who aren’t included in these plays, just because their birth dates aren’t Feb. 12. It’s all fairly random.
The best plays are those that don’t try to connect the dots: Rob Gerlach’s poignant “Lizzy and the Lincolns” eventually shows Lincoln having to inform his foolish wife’s black dressmaker that her beloved son, a child of rape, has died in battle.
Nora Douglass’ “What Would Abe Do” challenges a middle-school teacher to fully convey Lincoln’s legacy in 10 minutes. It’s the most educational piece, but it’s lessened by a teacher who’s breathless and absent- minded in an unnecessary attempt at comedy.
Plenty of yuks have preceded, most overtly Emily Golden’s silly “E-Words,” in which two coeds write an essay while playing a drinking game: Anyone who blurts “emancipated” or “evolution” has to pound vodka.
Adding to the levity of the evening are clever transitional songs sung live by Brian Ernst, such as a Tom Waits-like makeover of “Hey, Hey, We’re the Monkees.”
The writing and acting are fairly basic, but the strength of these TCOL commissioned projects is that they are happening at all. You just don’t see other community theaters taking on challenges of such scope. What keeps them from truly resonating is a lack of strong dramaturgy — someone to monitor for redundancy and shape the overall arc of the plays into a more profound whole.
Interesting issues and contradictions are touched upon: Darwin’s avowed opposition to slavery despite his belief that blacks were less evolved than whites. The suggestion that perhaps no one else would have done what Lincoln did to change the world in his time, while Darwin was merely first with a theory many were developing. The tidbit that Lincoln wrote more words than Shakespeare.
All matters worthy of more complex investigation.
These towering figures deserve their recognition. But with apologies to Darwin, this great project just needed to have been more evolved.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Separated at Birth: The Lincoln/Darwin Plays” ** (out of four stars)
Theater Company of Lafayette, 300 E. Simpson St. Through March 7. “Monkey Men”: Tonight (Feb. 27), March 1 and March 7. “Abe and Chuck (Way) Off Broadway” (an evening of short plays): Saturday (Feb. 28) and March 6. 7:30 p.m. (or 2 p.m. if Sunday). $10-$15 ($22 for both). 720-209-2154 or .
Read a short scrpt sample
Here’s . It’s from Donald R. Fried’s short play, “The Debate.”
