Curious Theatre’s world-premiere play “Astronomical Sunset” manages to take one of the more timely and mutually shared concerns of our times . . . and say next to nothing about it.
The issue — accountability in the vast ethical wilderness of the Internet — turns out to be so much window-dressing for a play that really wants more to be a sci-fi freakout that borrows from Alfred Hitchcock, “Twilight” and Tracy Letts’ far superior “Bug.”
A trippy-dip into “The Twilight Zone” might be fun, if there were something, anything, to like about it. But “Astronomical Sunset” is creepy and never particularly enjoyable. Worse, Robert Lewis Vaughan’s play is static and repetitive, which makes it difficult to remain engaged. None of the relationships feels remotely real, so there’s no believable foundation, and no one to root for when it all comes to a head.
And at times, your eyes will roll out of their sockets.
The most compelling aspect of director Chip Walton’s production is its mood. The sound and light effects dance together with a kind of sinister synergy to create a terrific atmosphere of disquiet.
We begin with a masterfully orchestrated prologue of fear. It’s deep night in a rustic, remote home (cozily conceived by Greg Loftus). There’s been a noise. Jim, cast in haunting shadows by lighting designer Shannon McKinney, explores the danger amid a cacophony of chilling sounds both natural and unnatural, expertly arranged by Jason Ducat.
But then the play starts. The opening scene all but repeats itself so many times that, by intermission, we haven’t moved an inch from the opening problem. You could walk into this play with 20 minutes to go, and not have missed much.
We’re tricked into thinking this might be a substantive exploration of guilt. Jim (a droopy Brian Landis Folkins), is a nearly catatonic 35-year-old who’s fled with his wife to this small town, hoping to escape the media glare and lawsuits that have haunted them since a scandal erupted over the illegal use of a never-defined website Jim created.
But that great conceit — and its human complexities — aren’t explored with any real insight, irony or wit. The crime — an 18-year-old boy named Jonah has posted nude pictures of his then 16-year-old girlfriend — seems far out of proportion to the fallout. Jonah’s been prosecuted and is now a registered sex offender, which has sent Jim into a funk worthy of Catherine in “Proof.”
This unexpected submission to guilt might ring true if Jim seemed in any way capable of experiencing that emotion. Instead, he’s pretty much a surly, paranoid boor who never lets go of his baseball bat. His placating wife (Allison Watrous in the thankless role of the year) exists for the sole, futile purpose of trying to get him to snap out of it, already.
Insinuating their way into this house of horrors come two unrealistically cocksure siblings — Bossy Lily (Lynnsey Ooton), a freakishly perky 16-year-old robokid who would make Annie Wilkes (“Misery”) run for cover, and Jared (Ben Sloane) a goth punk who wears raccoon makeup and repeatedly breaks into Jim’s house, he says, because he just wants to hang out with him. (Like that’s not weird.) None of it ever feels at all on the up-and-up. And Jim and Liz are agonizingly slow on the uptake.
The play turns on a “jump the shark” revelation — that’s the expression that entered the lexicon when the TV series “Happy Days” went irretrievably over the top.
“Astronomical Sunset” had a chance to take on the question of whether we’d all be better off without the Internet; to play with our ideas of reality versus virtual reality in the Internet world. But it’s just a ghost story, one that might work better as a more tightly contained one-act play. As is, it’s fundamentally flawed.
Now in its 13th year of thrilling audiences with the uncomfortable and the envelope-pushing, Curious Theatre has, and surely will again, do better.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Astronomical Sunset” *1/2 (out of four stars)
Presented by Curious Theatre, 1080 Acoma St. Written by Robert Lewis Vaughan. Through Dec. 4. 2 hours, 5 minutes. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. $18-$42. 303-623-0524 or
