Colonial Players’ Rocket Man
Fasten your seatbelts as we blast off for Colonial Players’ 66th season with Rocket Man, Steven Dietz’s 1998 serious comedy about the road not taken.
Act I counts down like a comedy sketch with a disturbing undercurrent. Act II is a space shuttle with frequent stops between grim reality and a fifth dimension of beautiful and bittersweet extremes where life runs backward and youth presages the end of possibilities.
In this surreal postcard from another dimension, you’ll meet Donny (Ben Carr), a landscape architect in the midst of a midlife crisis; his ex-wife Rita (Laura E. Gayvert); their resentful teen Trisha (Paige Miller); Donny’s best friend Buck (Timothy Sayles), a widower with a Noah complex; and Donny’s unacknowledged soul-mate Louise (Shirley Panek), a former co-worker turned divinity student.
Donny thinks that in another world it could have all turned out differently. To make the most of his remaining time, he has quit his job and jettisoned his worldly possessions to dedicate himself to studying the stars through his attic skylight. He is strangely calm for a man on the brink.
Given a second chance at life, Rita thinks we’d all make the same mistakes in new and interesting ways. She rants about Donny’s self-centered forgetfulness, while Trisha rants about finding her possessions strewn across the lawn for strangers to take.
Who is right, Donny or Rita?
Does he travel to another world, another time or a dream? Does our personality destine us to repeat history?
The playwright isn’t saying, but everyone has a theory, the cast included. That’s why all are so invested in their roles.
Carr doesn’t so much act the character of Donny as inhabit him, his face a palette of moods and thoughts that transcend words.
As Donny’s friend, Sayles is sweet comic relief with perfect timing and a quirky manner to foil the sad insanity that surrounds him. He is miscast only in that his full head of hair lends absurdity to his bald jokes.
As the insomniac sage Louise, Panek appreciates her character’s inability to transcend the careful detachment she cultivates.
As daughter Trisha, Miller melds maternalism with emotional distance. As ex-wife Rita, Gayvert demonstrates an unexpected girlishness in her reunion with Donny, though before that change of personality in Act II, it’s hard to understand why Donny might miss her.
In life “we demand the illusion of involvement,” Donny says, and that’s what the technical aspect of this show provides. With a set deliberately barren and depressing, designers achieve stunning moods with a soundtrack of space-inspired hits from Donny’s youth and a light grid that debuts with this show. When Donny blasts off into the heavens to the title tune, bathed in a visual wash of dancing galactic blue pinpoints, the gasping audience is also transported.
In this trip to the road not taken, we are encouraged to “travel further, dig deeper, live more and sing life.” If you can handle ambiguity, you’ll love the play. If not, bring a philosophical friend to help resolve questions.