Swing State With Four Capital Performances at 4th Wall

Before Rebecca Gilman’s Swing State begins, the lights are on at 4th Wall Theatre. We can observe Ryan McGettigan’s detailed and comfy farmhouse set. Look around and you spy the ubiquitous coffee maker, a jumbled desk off to the side, the milk glass light fixtures, a dining table with grandma chairs, a screen door which will bang shut like all screen doors do, an old porcelain mixing bowl on top of the refrigerator.

But what catches your eye is a chef’s knife resting on the butcher block cutting board. It’s not highlighted, it’s not even center stage, but something tells us this is something important. Immediately, we think of Chekhov’s famed directive: if a gun is seen in Act I, it had better go off in Act II. No extraneous details should mar the script.

When the play begins, Peg (the remarkably accomplished Pamela Vogel) is chopping walnuts for her zucchini bread. She seems distracted, a bit off. She stops for a moment and runs her fingers across the blade. She puts the tip against her wrist. We hold our breath. Then she holds the sharp point near her eye. What is she going to do?

In less time than it takes to describe the action, Gilman has us in the palm of her hand. The knife doesn’t turn out to be Chekhov’s gun, that will later turn out to be another weapon – an actual gun. The great Norwegian playwright had it right the first time. In this inaugural production for its 14th season, 4th Wall does it exceptionally right.

Gilman’s drama from 2022 swirls lightly with themes of COVID, environmental catastrophe, a bit of Blue State/Red State prickliness, and an overwhelming sense of loss and being out of joint. While not overly political, although the title might lead you to think so, Gilman has created (Spinning Into Butter, Luna Gale) what in theater circles is known as “the well-made play.” This genre’s gone out of fashion recently, but, when done with such meticulous precision as Gilman wields, her blade cuts deep and clean. In this four-character study, coincidences pile up, reversals are disclosed with crisp dramatic timing, and characters talk like real people. We’re drawn into the story as if lured by a fabled Siren.

Peg is a widow who lives on a patch of wild prairie in Wisconsin. A former guidance counselor at the local high school, she’s feisty, woke, a sort of old-timey pioneer, and a lover of the wilderness who catalogs the disappearance of the natural world. Bees, bats, butterflies, even her beloved wildflowers are decreasing with alarming regularity. Could it be her neighbor’s pesticide runoff that is infecting her paradise? Will she be around to see the inevitable destruction? Does she want to be?

Her young friend Ryan (Wesley Whitson, phenomenal as usual) fresh out of prison and working as a handyman for her while driving a delivery truck in a mindless job, challenges her at every step. “You’re a real ray of sunshine,” he mocks as she rattles off nature’s depletion. He senses something’s wrong with his old friend, his only friend. Something isn’t right. He knows the “tell” she gives off when lying. She dodges, he parries, and she dodges again. Ryan loves the land as much as Peg, but after years in prison he just can’t seem to trust. It’s a fascinating and real interplay between them.

When sheriff Kris (Christy Watkins, a former Houston Theater Award-winning Best Actress) learns of the theft of Peg’s cherished belongings, her suspicion naturally turns to Ryan. Previously, she blamed him for the death of her son from a fentanyl overdose at a drunken party at Ryan’s house. She refuses to be charitable. Peg will hear none of these accusations against Ryan, but suspicions gnaw at her. Depuy Dani (Faith Fossett, a young Houston theater bright light), niece of Kris and Ryan’s old school buddy, is a newbie on the job and wants to believe Ryan’s denials, but she will eventually become the unwitting sword of injustice.

Everybody shines in this intimate drama which is a welcome throwback to social plays from yesteryear. We admire the characters, root for them in spite of their faults, and pray for their redemption, if not happiness. Perhaps “moving on” is good enough.

Director Jennifer Dean, 4th Wall’s new artistic director, supplies the nuances beneath the kitchen-sink drama, and leads her actors with easy naturalness. She lets them free to be. The ensemble couldn’t be better. Vogel plays flinty and stalwart with an undercurrent of holding back. She listens when other actors speak to her, you can see it in her face. She “tells” directly to us – and to them. Something is boiling beneath, though, when she drops her water bottle, when she commands Ryan to breathe while he’s melting down, when she counts the flower seeds for planting as if she alone can rescue the world. Her Peg is replete with details that say everything.

Whitson, of course, knows exactly what he’s doing. A natural actor, there’s nothing false or forced about him. Just sit back and relax, he’ll lead you to discover his character with telling details and a disarming insouciance. When he thinks Peg has betrayed him, his breakdown is immensely affecting. You, too, want to walk him back from the ledge.

Watkins etches Kris’ disdain and insufferable stoicism with her impressive command of the stage. She won’t let you like her character. And Fossett’s open face and auburn-haired innocence is perfect for Dani’s overwhelmed position on the police force. Dani is learning on the job, and her youthfulness may be her undoing.

Gilman’s play roars through 90 minutes and continually surprises with its trenchant observations that make us laugh, yet catch us by the throat at the end. Maybe it’s the chirping of birds throughout Yezminne Zepada’s subtle soundscape or Rosa Cano’s atmospheric lighting, but environment devastation, political divide, or neighborly feuds take second place to people’s ultimate concern for each other. I’d say we should have seen it coming, but that knife on the kitchen counter tells all. Just don’t trust what you see. Gilman and Chekhov know better.

Swing State continues through October 5 at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; and 3 p.m. Sundays at Spring Street Studios, 1824 Spring Street. For more information, call 832-767-4991 or visit 4thwalltheatreco.com. $17-$52. Monday, September 30, Pay-What-You-Can.