Theatre in Review: Underland (terraNOVA Collective/59E59)It's not often that a playwright sets out to mystify an audience as resolutely as Alexandra Collier does in Underland. The setting is "a small, dusty town in the middle of Australia," and believe me, this Underland is no wonderland. Drought conditions prevail. There are warnings about crocodiles, reportedly moving ever closer to town in search of water. People have a way of turning up dead or disappearing altogether. And what about the man who staggers on stage at the opening, looking disturbed and pulling a bloody tooth from his mouth? Following this ugly display, the play switches gears, focusing for a while on Ruth and Violet, a pair of adolescent girls who dabble in smoking pot and gossiping maliciously about everyone they know. Violet is the prettier, more dominant one, to whom Ruth anxiously kowtows, but they make a perfectly matched pair of hellions, amusing themselves by sitting in the back of art class and making annoying meowing sounds while their new teacher tries to introduce herself. The teacher, Miss Harmony (Collier favors names right out of Restoration comedy), is new to town; in one of the play's sharpest, funniest passages, her easygoing, let's-be-friends manner is contrasted with the scalding, hard-ass approach of the gym and math teacher, Mr. B. ("You're like flaccid wombats, the lot of you," he says, offering his own special brand of motivation.) It's not long before a little B-Harmony romance is in the air; at the risk of giving away too much, let's just say that she discovers that passion has its price. Then there's Taka, a Japanese salaryman sitting in his Tokyo office, listening to exercise audios and playing with his tamagotchi, a tiny little digital pet that, in this case, meows like a kitten. He finds a hole in his floor and, getting inside, begins crawling along it until he exits -- in the Australian town inhabited by Ruth, Violet, et al. If you're getting the mental bends reading this, all I can say is that watching Underland does little to clarify matters. It's an unwieldy collection of elements, blending small-town naturalism with horror/fantasy plot twists, all served up in an atmosphere of portentous mystery that couldn't be more pretentious. I guess you could make the case that Collier is spinning some kind of environmental fable, or perhaps it's all a metaphor for the annihilating qualities of provincial life. Or maybe the playwright thinks she is merely spinning a bloody good yarn. You'll have to ask her. If anything, Mia Rovegno's direction piles on the oppressive atmosphere, in a seeming attempt at making it seem like something important is happening. She does, however, get good work from her cast. As Ruth and Violet, Kiley Lotz and Angeliea Stark offer hair-raisingly accurate portraits of the kind of sullen, rebellious adolescent who makes one think fondly about reviving corporal punishment, but each of them gradually reveals layers of uncertainty that make them more than just caricatures. Jens Rasmussen is quite striking as the furious, tough-talking Mr. B., who harbors a powerful, all-consuming passion for Miss Harmony, and is also in possession of a terrible secret. Georgia Cohen is appealing as Miss Harmony, even if she is one of those characters who blithely ignore for too long the fact that all hell is breaking loose around her. As Taka, Daniel K. Isaac is little more than a plot point, and the vast majority of his lines are in Japanese, so he never makes much of an impression. It's always a pleasure to have Annie Golden around, even in the role of the bizarre Miss Butterfat, a widowed teacher who wanders around handing out religious pamphlets; making unsettling, insinuating statements; and seeking out companions for her long bike rides -- from which her guests never seem to return. At least Underland looks interesting in Gabriel Hainer Evansohn's set design, in which a red line glows eerily in the dirt floor and the stage is surrounded by corrugated metal walls on which have been painted a network of lines and dots suggestive of a collection of nerve synapses. Burke Brown's lighting design confidently reshapes the space for each new scene and in many scenes contributes to the overall atmosphere of menace. Elisheba Ittoop's fluent sound design mixes radio broadcasts, ambient weather noises, and mysterious rumbles to sinister effect. Moria Sine Clinton's costumes are perfectly okay. But for a play so suffused with darkness and the threat of violence, Underland is surprisingly dull. Collier hasn't found an organizing principle for her strange characters and the weird things that happen to them. In the area of thrills, Underland distinctly underperforms. -- David Barbour 
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