MCKAY’S BEES
A sort of pacifist Karl Marx with an entomological slant, McKay envisions a utopian city called Equilibrium composed primarily, one might assume, of workers, queens, and drones. It isn’t long before McKay comes to realize that lessons learned by observing bees aren’t easily applied to humans. The journey west is fraught with danger, involving marauding thugs and alligators, and upon arriving in Kansas the three are plunked down in the midst of violent conflicts between supporters of slavery and abolitionists. Unable to jump right into his plans, Gordon opens up a hotel in Lawrence where many seemingly divergent stories begin to intersect.
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Barletta’s direction is respectful where it should be innovative. Though there are some great performances here–Christopher Gerson’s dignified but wet-behind-the-ears Collin and Warren Davis’s hilariously eccentric Sewall leap immediately to mind–the staging is straightforward and dull. Having characters freeze when others are talking is not an acceptable solution to focusing the audience’s attention. Also the play lacks a sense of rhythm: it lurches along from scene to scene, not allowing the actors to find the appropriate rhythms within scenes. When violence and tragedy erupt onstage, the actors’ reactions seem implausibly understated.
