Wrens, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, at Footsteps Theatre. Great acting requires a great moral dilemma the way an Indy car needs high-octane fuel. Playwright Anne McGravie, with the help of directors Karen Kessler and Scott M. Verissimo, eventually pushes Rivendell’s stellar seven-person cast to the brink of a moral chasm and into overdrive. But it takes an entire act to get her engine started. Her semiautobiographical Wrens is set on the eve of VE day in an unassuming barracks of the Women’s Royal Naval Service. The Wrens, unappreciated and patronized by male officers, fear that peacetime will return them to positions of uselessness, their patriotic sacrifices belittled or overlooked. But in the first act, as the women bicker and confess, they simply describe situations, repeatedly explaining the playwright’s points. They seem more like assembled panelists than dramatic characters.
