Dividing lines: 'The Meridian Cafe' premieres in American Lives Theatre production

 

Serious couple spat: Billy and Sara

Extraordinary rapport between a playwright and a theater artistic director accounts for the special stature of a world premiere that opened Thursday night at the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre.

Chris Saunders, artistic director of American Lives Theatre, has long admired the work of Lucy Thurber, and that admiration bore fruit in the offer to write a play for ALT centered on Indianapolis, including input into selection of a cast that would shape the creative process. 

Saunders of course directed this first-ever production, which was saved as I saw it from looking overpolished and tidy by superb acting in the wild life paths followed by each of the characters. 

Thus, a perfectly realized premiere stayed fresh and surprising over its

Luke looks on as James calms Candace.

70-minute span. Besides, the playwright's reported delight in getting acquainted with Indianapolis plays an essential role in "The Meridian Cafe," along with the show's design specific to these actors.

The play's title conveys the breadth of Thurber's response. The fictional burger joint, as the proprietor calls it, is presumably located on Meridian Street, surely south of 38th. "Meridian" as a word is defined as a line marking halves of a sphere, and binary definitions under challenge apply crucially to this play.  

There is nothing conventionally "Hoosier" about the play, which focuses on various degrees of dysfunctional relationships and personal identity among the six characters. Surely, any's* modeling the characters on these actors closes the loop between creation and performance.

There is a vital tension between urban and rural perspectives on Hoosier values; perhaps that's reflected coincidentally in the news that only Marion and Lake counties in this state will have federal monitors on Election Day.

Nicky shares hopes with boss.

In "The Meridian Cafe," personal aspirations are at various stages of achievement, with the trend being toward the stubborn recurrence of obstacles. Maybe song provides a time-honored path forward. Maybe everyone can perform their way out of trouble. Performative behavior is, after all, often a baroque outgrowth of authenticity. 

My first checkpoint for attention to detail was to focus on the clock on the set wall. After I sat down in the Basile Theatre, I was cheered to find it working, which seemed essential to the program description of the play's setting as "Fall, 9 p.m." I once wrote about a local production with a wall clock whose hands never moved, which a friend later pointed out to me. How did I miss that? This clock registered the show's real time, which checked in at about 70 minutes.

Another personal memory helped me keep the local significance of "Meridian" uppermost. Once when I worked at the Star, a reference to Meridian Street in a headline was misspelled, lacking the second i. The managing editor summoned every copy editor in Features to meetings, one by one. When I questioned why this inquisition was necessary, the boss' eyes widened as he gave a what-a-dumb-question response. The gist was: This is the city's main street, thousands of papers went out with it wrong, and we have to find out who is responsible —who wrote it and who read the page proof — and that no one is covering for anybody else. (Fortunately for me, the boss got his man, eventually.)

No wonder Thursday's performance seemed flawless in every respect, from design to movement to the spoken intensity, starting with Candace, the unreconstructed bag lady played by Lynne Perkins. With fierce equanimity, Ian Cruz played proprietor James with a stalwart work ethic and the knack for being protective of others as well as himself. Joshua Short as employee Nicky exuded energy as the soul of social mobility at society's lower margins, proud of  aspirations to chef status with his introduction of hollandaise sauce to the menu.

Matt Kraft radiated desperation as well as potential as new hire Luke, about whom Nicky knows too much. Tangentially the recovering alcoholic Luke had a dimly recalled relationship with Billy (Allen Sledge), who storms into the cafe trying to make amends with his weepy runaway wife Sara (Morgan Morton), their marriage damaged by their veiled identities and her difficult adjustment to big-city life. 

Like a skillfully constructed short story, "The Meridian Cafe" presents a scrupulously detailed snapshot of each character, enlivened by crisp portrayals and rowdy comic touches from the get-go, right through each initially puzzling revelation. We learn just enough to be enthralled, then sympathetic to them all. Whatever mysteries remain are entitled to stay put, enlivened by indelible portrayals. 

[Photos by Indy Ghost Light]

*Thurber's choice of pronouns