Review: Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England (Theater Wit)

By Chicagotheaterbeat @chitheaterbeat

  
  
Seven Homeless Mammoths
   Wander New England

Written by Madeleine George 
Directed by Jeremy Wechsler
at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont (map)
thru April 27  |  tickets: $20-$36   |  more info
  
Check for half-price tickets 
  
  
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Hearts and minds dually engaged in delightful comedy

     

  

Theater Wit presents

  

Seven Homeless Mammoths 
   Wander New England

  

Review by Clint May 

Two things almost never happen after a production, especially one that runs just over two hours. One: I rarely want the show to run longer and two: I’ve never wanted to see a spin-off. Both of these things happened at the end of Madeleine George’s delightful new comedy Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England. As a follow-up to last year’s hit Completeness, (also directed by Jeremy Wechsler) Theater Wit’s latest academic-themed dissection of love in the 21st century expertly mingles broad with incisive humor for a look at love in an altogether different generation.

Twenty years after their first date and unknown years since their break-up, Greer (Laura T. Fisher) and Wreen (Meighan Garachis) are increasingly bitter relics in a museum of their own lives. Their upscale New England university is being overrun by the “feckless” Millennials they’ve been forced to let in to help meet costs. To make room for student housing, the outmoded Pratt Museum of Natural History—also a relic of another time whose desolation has made it a popular campus hook up spot—is in the line of fire. This is a PR nightmare for the recently appointed Dean Wreen, who must now fend off attacks from alumni who suddenly find a great deal of affection for something that might soon be passing away. Complicating matters further, Greer’s cancer has returned. Wreen quickly moves her back into their former home for care and monitoring. There, Greer will have to put up with Wreen’s controversial new fling, a much younger former student with a taken name of Andromeda (Kristen Magee). She’s a bit of an intellectual lightweight but sweet nonetheless, as well as a fan of “alternate kinship structures” and “Friends”. Typical for granolas on the East Coast, philosophy professor Greer is astonished at the appearance of such a vulgar thing as a TV in her former house as much as she is by her ex’s choice in lovers. It’s clear Wreen has a love/hate relationship with the youth, while the initially dubious Greer takes an initially patronizing interest in the ingenue.

Footnoting the triad’s trials and tribulations, the various dusty dioramas of Early Man (Casey Searles and Susaan Jamshidi) echo the various collegiate couples that come to the Pratt Museum for clandestine flings. These short interludes —perhaps inspired by the idea “if these wax figures could talk!”—are easily the most hilarious feature of Mammoths. Searles and Jamshidi don’t move but for their mouths, but in their vocal intonations become couples of various gender combinations desperately and awkwardly fumbling their way to some kind of connection. It’s the kind of surreality I would gladly see spun off that I might watch for hours. Rituals feature heavily in Mammoths’ main story, so it makes more sense than it might initially appear to let these demonstrative tableaux of long ago get a word in edgewise. We’re still in their ice age, though our modern day neuroses may look quite alien to a people with such vastly different priorities like creating agriculture and surviving saber tooth tiger attacks. As the voice of the community (and museum caretaker), Steve Herson also inhabits several quirky contemporary characters as he fleshes out the larger world and all its aged alumni with nothing better to do than fight for a bunch of bones they’ve not seen in years. Beneath their veneer of civic duty, everyone is fighting not to save the mammoths that form the heart of the collection, but to preserve the bittersweet memories of youthful love when the future seemed distant and passion was hurriedly taken with a hint of the risqué.

Like Completeness, Seven Homeless Mammoths has a mind for the high-language of academia and the artifices that intelligence constructs to protect itself from feeling raw emotion (“This rational humanism is getting exhausting.”). Always tuned towards accessibility, Weschler finds all the right notes in George’s insightful look at our conflicted and contradictory attempts at love and letting go. Coaxing lovely performances all around, it’s Fisher who delivers the most stunning turn. Her metamorphoses from acerbic to accepting is achingly real and punctuated with sublime moments of dry humor that melt the heart through the laughter. Garachis plays off her fabulously well, and the two have the genuine chemistry of old lovers fighting extinction and their own lingering attraction. Magee has a great sense of herself as a New Age “bimbo” who still remains sympathetic even while spouting ridiculous concepts like “oppositional magnetism” and  “spirit classes” that she picks up from a yogi guru and applies to Ross and Rachel (who famously had their first encounter at Ross’ museum, a nod from George to a screwball comedy inspiration).

Mammoths wisely leaves certain questions unanswered – it’s not for us to know why Greer and Wreen broke up or what specifically happened to Andromeda to make her break so completely with her former life. Every person is a museum, filled with forgotten artifacts, drawers of sparkling geodes and entire wings rarely visited by even us, their caretakers. Only when it’s threatened do we take arms to preserve it. Mammoths reminds us not to wait until the bulldozers are at the doorstep to cherish whatever good or bad made us who we are.

  

Rating: ★★★★

  

  

Seven Homeless Mammoths continues through April 27th at Theater Wit,  1229 W. Belmont (map), with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays 3pm.  Tickets are $20-$36, and are available by phone (773-975-8150) or online through their website (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at TheaterWit.org.  (Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes, includes an intermission)

Photos by Charles Osgood 

     

artists

cast

Laura T. Fisher (Greer), Meighan Garachis (Dean Wreen), Steve Herson (Caretaker), Kristen Magee (Andromeda), Susaan Jamshidi (Early Man 1), Casey Searles (Early Man 2)

behind the scenes

Jeremy Wechsler (director), Joe Schermoly (scenic design), Christine Pascual (costume design), Christopher Kriz (original music, sound design), Cassy Schillo (properties designer), Barbara Charlene (audience designer), Majel Cuza (production manager), John Kelly (master electrician), Katie Klemme (stage manager), Pasty Radford (assistant stage manager), Clare Cooney (assistant director), Charles Osgood (photos)

 

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