Liza Birkenmeier’s The Way Out West provides some glimpses of life and work in a secret and isolated community during the Second World War.
The world premiere play is the first commissioned by the School of Drama for its storied mainstage. Birkenmeier, a 2012 alumna, has a play well on its way, but tweaks could be expected for future productions.
Buoyed by an amazing production full of fine performances and brilliant technical values, Out West is full of stories, characters, and subplots that merit plays of their own. A play about the wives and women living on the base could be an intimate character study. A script about the engineers and scientists could stand on its own. And a piece centered on A-bomb mastermind and yoga master Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the Los Alamos Laboratory, would be fascinating.
The Way Out West has the characteristics of many new plays as the writer’s research, imagination and worldview is reflected in a script we have not heard before. That is always exciting. A new work is a like a stew in which we can’t resist adding more and more ingredients even as it threatens to boil over. The challenges include defining focus and bravely carving off beloved bits that may detract from the core theme and the characters’ journeys. This process is expected to continue during every production of new works.
Kim Weild, the John Wells Professor of Directing, stages action that spans about three years during the sequestered workers at Los Alamos. During the wartime story, President Franklin Roosevelt dies, Hitler is defeated in Europe, and the Pacific conflict rages on.
Performed without an intermission, Out West flows well with Weild’s staging and hand in developing the stories within the script with her cast. Adryan Miller-Gorder’s set provides simple spaces for varied scenes and ample surfaces for some amazing projected effects. Execution of a passenger train at the opening and ending of the piece is stellar–something one might not expect in a “campus” production, but at Carnegie Mellon, it’s done as well as on the professional stages to which these students aspire. The playing areas are well employed by Weild to showcase characters’ important moments and for moving the entire cast of 12 through the action.
We would like to spend more time with some of these people who faced moral conflicts over the potential use of what they were creating while navigating tension in their marriages and work. The husbands were consumed with their serious assignment and the women on site were typically housewives struggling with water rationing, dust, and loneliness.
Leona, played by Brenna Power, is a newlywed who arrives join her husband at Los Alamos. She meets Irene, portrayed by Leaf Rickard, the woman who has just moved from the same house. They seem at the heart of the story as they support one another, drink together and even share some kisses. But there is only so much time to spend with them.
The scientists and spouses played by Asa Gardiner, Damon Rosati, Scott Kennedy, Caroline, Mixon, Cameron Wise, and Ava Yaghmaie. Norman, the busy MP, is played by Antonio Jefferies. All are extremely intriguing characters as the cast aptly creates them for the very first time.
Midway, the play abruptly jumps to a thought-provoking but misplaced scene in the 1990s when a talented young student is about to begin an engineering career that may involve weapons and delivery methods such as drones. Saran Barkari and Arthur Langlie turn in fine performances in this bit. While it was interesting to connect the development of such technology over the decades with characters in a different era considering the moral dilemma of war. The action was set at Cal Tech, but it could have been Carnegie Mellon with its Software Engineering Institute. Better cut, moved to kick off a second act, or even as a compelling epilogue, the scene jarred us from our journey back at Los Alamos. And it diluted the dramatic effect of the bomb itself.
When the play’s action moved back to New Mexico, we yearned for more about those mid-century couples. But many seemed damaged and disillusioned–along with much of the world–at what their science had wrought. As Irene says, “I don’t believe it’s for the great good.” We won the war but didn’t we lose our humanity? But perhaps the play reminds us that the victims of our weapons also include those who invent them.
Plays with historic inspiration deserve resources and the School of Drama shares these links for audiences in addition to compelling content in the program book. They reinforce the overwhelming wealth of information from which a playwright might draw. Birkenmeier is commended for exploring this dark period of history and technology and honoring the people who lived it.
Voice of the Manhattan Project features more than 500 oral histories of those involved in the development of the Atomic Bomb and their families.
Video about the Trinity Test, the world’s first nuclear weapons test.
The Way Out West is on stage only through October 13 with tickets on sale at the Drama Box Office.
Photos by Louis Stein
Yvonne Hudson, a Pittsburgh-based writer, publicist, actor, and singer, joined PITR as a writer and adviser in February 2016. She began performing and writing during high school in Indiana, PA. The Point Park journalism grad credits her Globe editor for first assigning her to review a play. Yvonne is grateful to Dr. Attilio Favorini for master’s studies at Pitt Theatre Arts, work at Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival, and believing in her Shakespearean journey. When not working with nonprofits, this lifelong chorister sings with Calvary UM Church’s annual Messiah choir. Having played Juliet’s Nurse for Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks, Yvonne is now seen in her solo shows, Mrs Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson: The Poet Lights the Lamp. Goals: See all of Shakespeare’s plays in production and memorize more Sonnets. Fave quotes: “Good deed in a naughty world,” “Attention must be paid,” and “A handbag?” Twitter @msshakespeare Facebook: PoetsCornerPittsburgh LinkedIn
Categories: Archived Reviews