CHILD-ISH and White Heat: the SummerWorks Lab series produces two hits

16 Aug 2019

If I only had the luxury to experience all that SummerWorks has to offer. What I have managed to attend has been extraordinary. Unfortunately both are limited runs as part of the SummerWorks Lab series, where works in development are presented to an audience to help the creatives fine tune future productions. Catch them fast if they aren't already sold out.

CHILD-ISH by Sunny Drake (No Strings (Attached), X) explicitly states that it is a work-in-progress, with Drake explaining in an epilogue exactly what the next two stages of development are. For emphasis, the audience is given a questionnaire requesting feedback. What is on the stage, so far, is fascinating and very funny and thought-provoking. Best of all CHILD-ISH exudes a sense of hope and optimism that is refreshing in these particular times.

CHILD-ISH is composed of interviews with children aged 5 to 11 that have then been cut and paste to make dramatic pieces or to comment on other interview segments. The results are read and performed by a stellar cast of adults - Itar Aditi, Walter Borden (Lilies; Or, The Revival of a Romantic Drama, Harlem Duet, Gerontophilia), Maggie Huculak (Love and Information, Cake and Dirt), Sonny Mills, and Zorana Sadiq (Towards Youth)  - all of whom have impeccable comic timing. The main gag of wisdom and/or potty mouthedness and/or non sequiturs coming from the mouths of babes, mouthed by sophisticatedly dressed adults, just doesn't grow old. 

The children expound on love and death with precision, insight or wackiness, and a few political hot buttons are shoehorned in just smoothly enough not to jar. There are recurring mentions of a possible alien invasion or a first encounter with aliens that may explain the choreographed mime movements and bright lights that are the anti-climax. But when Borden has struggled to tell a joke that gets funnier and funnier the more it is botched, Aditi teaches how to "bum bum box" and play with his mother's Tinder, and the children admit that they don't understand "real estate," "gas prices," and "some Doctor Who episodes," we have been charmed.

The script is still in flux with some extraneous additions for dramatic coherence and an unfortunate final scene involving audience participation. This is only a letdown because of a delightful surprise just before, that signalled a new and compelling direction for the production. Fortunately Drake assures us that we have just seen act one of stage one. The moments where the characters do interact in magical ways - there is a lot of stand and deliver that is almost stand-up - make the anticipation of act two in stages two and three seem like the trillion billion gazillion minutes that the CHILD-ISH children complain about.

White Heat by Graham Isador (Situational Anarchy) does not offer optimism, it is a searing, relentless drama ripped from the headlines. This version is only an incomplete production because the very drama that fuels it - racism, white nationalism, censorship, trolls and media responsibility - has exploded in yet another direction in the very week that the cast and director Jill Harper were doing their final rehearsals. White Heat is a canary in a coalmine, but the mine is already a conflagration out of control.

A journalist writes an opinion piece on why it is okay to punch a nazi. A white supremacist podcast takes umbrage and urges its listeners to act. The journalist begins to investigate the podcast host, and what could be a simple plot and theme, becomes daringly complicated. At one point the journalist opines that the alt-right has "weaponized empathy," and that is exactly what Isador has done. The morality and ideas are constantly shifting throughout White Heat and the result is shocking and disturbing in a very powerful way.

Part of this is due to intense and focussed performances from the cat and mouse duo. White Heat is structured as alternating monologues building to a confrontation. Makambe Simamba is the journalist, and has some heavy lifting with a lot of exposition and descriptions of her reactions instead of being able to actually react. But she never for a second lets the audience disengage and when she gets a scene partner with whom she can let it rip, she is spectacular, covering a wide range of emotional states in a very narrow framework.

It helps that Tim Walker's "The Captain" is a formidable foil. Walker (Bone Cage, Rock) has the showier role and he takes full advantage while also always hinting at the man within the monster and the monster within in the man. Creepy and yet persuasive. A mid-play transition is a tour de force and Walker never lets up from there on. White Heat is the very definition of a play with triggers and is very Hitchcockian in its structure. The plot doesn't go where expected, the emotions and the reactions to those emotions are raw, and it is vertiginous and morally dizzying to try to process those reactions while White Heat rockets along.

The space and staging constraints in this production will undoubtedly be solved when White Heat gets a final production. Though there was a, possibly unintentional, visual that added immensely to the proceedings. While Simamba mainly held centre stage, only stepping aside into partial blackouts, Walker roamed as far as the catwalk above and broadcast from multiple locations. Seeing him walk unobtrusively in partial blackness from one side of the stage to another while Simamba ably held our main attention, was eerily unsettling. The alt-right poison, the white supremacists, really are everywhere around us, in this case literally.