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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > January > 23 > Entry
Review: ‘Dying City’ at FronteraFest
The war in Iraq and Afghanistan may provide the framework of Christopher Shinn’s tidy and forceful Pulitzer-nominated drama ‘Dying City,’ now getting its regional premiere courtesy of Capital T Theatre as part of FronteraFest.
But the war is just a shadow to Shinn’s deceptively complex story. The battle here is really about love and truth — and the passive aggressiveness that permeates the lives a young widow and her husband’s twin brother.
About a year after her literature-loving Harvard-grad husband Craig has been killed in the Iraq war, Kelly (Liz Fisher) is holed up in her Manhattan apartment when Peter, Craig’s identical twin, (Mark Scheibmeir) shows up unexpectedly for a long-forsaken reconciliation.
When Craig materializes in flashbacks to the night before he left for war, Scheibmeir plays him too. That double-casting is a bit gimmicky on the playwright’s part, but it works, and Scheibmeir dexteriously and convincingly handles both roles.
Gay, an actor and a creator of complicated personal situations, Peter is the polar opposite of his controlling brother. Or so it seems. Shinn’s script reveals the truth about the weird, dysfunctional emotional triangle between Kelly and Craig/Peter through a kind of neat, almost formulaic unraveling. But Shinn’s skillful, realistic dialogue nevertheless saves ‘Dying City’ from being utterly formulaic and thoroughly trenchant.
Well-directed by Derek Kolluri, this success of this Capital T Theatre production relies on solid, intense performances from Fisher and Scheibmeir.
If not wholly provocative, ‘Dying City’ bears attention for its accurate snapshot of contemporary emotional life.
‘Dying City’ continues 2 p.m. Jan. 24, 9 p.m. Jan. 28, 7 p.m. Jan. 29 at Blue Theater, 916 Springdale Road. www.capitalttheatre.org
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