Phoebe in Winter by Strawshop has questions

 


My quick reaction to PHOEBE IN WINTER

Produced by Strawberry Theatre Workshop
Written by Jen Silverman
Directed by Kate Drummond
The Concord Theatricals blurb of the play says, “When three brothers return home from a distant war, they prepare to settle into their old lives. But … a war that was once far away now threatens to reignite inside their home.”
This is not the first piece of media to explore “the war comes home.” When it does in this play, it’s dark, it’s comic and it’s darkly comic.
It starts to feel like a poem. There are these short, sharp stanza-scenes. The language is heightened, as the emotion is. Each of them ends with a flourish, a wow moment. I literally said “wow” out loud at least once (I’m that guy.) The meaning and implications go in many directions and you’re not sure where, but you get swept up in the excitement and energy generated.
About two-thirds of the way through, there is a shift. Maybe, to mix metaphors, it’s like a new movement of a symphony, a new vibe. You feel it. This is when the plot emerges, both in the sense that the story takes a more definite direction, and the characters begin to nakedly plot against each other.
The play has lots to say about identity and family and war and even propriety, of all things. But I think what it really has is questions. It asks, can we go back to the way things were, before they became so horribly broken? If not, how can we move forward from this broken place?
See it and find out where it points. (And find out why there is a picture of a bathtub with this post.)
Only two more shows as of the time I write this: Friday 6/27 7:30pm and Saturday 6/28 7:30pm at 12th Avenue Arts on Capitol Hill.

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