Benjamin Booker’s 2014 self-titled debut and 2017 album Witness, his excellent sophomore effort, are blues and garage rock at their finest, imbued with a punk rock ethos. It might have been expected that LOWER, the New Orleans-based musician’s long-awaited third album, would follow suit musically, but Booker has not spent the past eight years crystallized in time. LOWER is not a departure but an evolution from his original sound, marrying hip-hop beats (thanks to L.A. producer Kenny Segal), dream pop, and experimental noise rock with Booker’s blues and punk roots. Older and wiser, Booker uses the songs on LOWER to explore sometimes brutal, sometimes tender self-reflections on his direction in life and place in the world. The album opens with the ominous “BLACK OPPS,” which, like second track “LWA IN THE TRAILER PARK,” does not shy away from the feelings of estrangement inherent to existence. “SLOW DANCE IN A GAY BAR” explores whether or not we can be our own salvation, ultimately coming to the conclusion that this is indeed possible (“I am beginning to see the beauty all around me / What this life can be”). The dreamy and cheerful “NEW WORLD” takes this further, gently acknowledging that, despite the hardships in our reality, there still exists love and hope. This sentiment is at the heart of LOWER: Instead of allowing our internal (and external) conflicts to destroy us, we have the power to use them as fuel for rebirth and renewal. (The music video for “SLOW DANCE IN A GAY BAR” is dedicated to the victims of the New Year’s attack in the French Quarter. Benjamin Booker will perform at Siberia on March 7.) —Mary Beth Campbell
Ded Debbie’s self-titled album marks the band’s first and last full-length release for the foreseeable future. The four-piece has been an integral part of the local scene since 2021, playing shows along the usual DIY circuit—Gasa Gasa, Saturn Bar, The Goat, and such. On the day of the album’s November release, Ded Debbie played their final show at Siberia, surrounded by friends and fans as they bid their farewell. The record, which consists of tracks composed over the band’s three-year lifespan, serves as a time capsule that preserves Ded Debbie’s legacy as a chaotic yet unifying force. Opening track “RATS” sets off with a heavy crawl, spoken lyrics painting a picture of Poe-esque paranoia, layered over instrumental sludge. Before long, the track speeds to a thrashing tempo, punctuated by a riff reminiscent of Black Sabbath. As the record progresses, the punk band’s true-to-form irreverence and darkened humor is revealed through unapologetic social commentary: confronting the fascist mindset in “Untitled,” condemning police in “Slaughterhouse,” sardonically acclaiming American patriotism in “The Ultranationalist Jingoism Shuffle.” Traversing the hills and valleys of post-punk, doom metal, and noise rock, Ded Debbie is a conclusive portrait of the spirit of the New Orleans punk scene. —Victoria Conway
Before it’s 6:00 a.m., again, make sure The Flowers of Beltane’s In the Burrow is in your CD player to re-start your morning. With a title playfully referring to Groundhog Day, these kids from the Neutral Ground Coffeehouse, home-grown pioneers of “fuzzy” folk punk, headlined last May’s “The dahling buds of May [sic]”—a variety show at The Mudlark Theatre—with their handmade replica of a Panasonic RC-6025 radio-alarm. Fronted by Wonka-esque visionary Johnny Velveteen, and co-led with amateur-auteur Cornelius Corduroy, their collaboration cross-pollinates a hybrid of alt-emocore with indie folk, one akin to Elephant 6 collective puttering around the kitchen making tea while a lofi-denatured Billy Corgan shreds on guitar. Don’t sleep on Velveteen’s wordplay—think of Syd Barrett’s tender mischief or Richard Dadd’s painting The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke. Personnel of their folkadelic Paisley Constellation includes names like Serena Kettle, Matthias Twinklecorn, and Juniper Rumplebottom. In the Burrow debuted as an underground DIY release, so VIP tickets guaranteed a decorated souvenir—all with Sharpie scribbles of smiling suns and moons within an album cover cut to size and slipped into each jewel case. You can find their music in the metaverse, but physical media is debonair and subversive. This special edition of In the Burrow remains memorable in an era of “streaming on all platforms” ubiquity.
—Romey Petite
Lay in the grass with soft harp in the distance. Such is the explicit invitation from visionary harpist Cassie Watson Francillon to her live solo ambient harp performances in nature. Francillon recently released recordings of these performances on her album Lanati: Vol 1 (Field Recording) via Bandcamp. The recording is organized into three sections: “Section 1: Unisonous,” “Section 2: Time,” and “Section 3: Victory Garden.” The album title honors her ancestry, as lanati is Haitian Kreyól for nature, and the album opens and closes with nearby blue jay and crow calls. Francillon’s expansive practice is inspired by and merges traditions of jazz, Black American spirituals, hip-hop, classical, experimental, and interpretations of Björk, among others. She is the founder of the cerebral Consortium “live sonic installations” series at the Marigny Opera House and Hotel Saint Vincent and is adept in both collaborative and solo settings. In Lanati, Francillon is solo, with contributions from nature, and plays on a smaller harp—an electro-acoustic Lever produced by Salvi—for ease of mobility. Documented on a petite handheld recorder held close to her body, Lanati picks up the creaking of the harp, sounds of the artist’s hands, and helps to amplify the tonal reverberations of suspended notes and small refrains. The effect is surprisingly intimate for a recording made in a public space. On “Section 2,” Francillon introduces a pre-recorded tambourine sound that recalls spillover music not uncommon to the environs of New Orleans. Here, the time signatures of both the harp and tambourine are 4/4, and the addition of the eighth and sixteenth notes on the tambourine “evokes the thread of Black spiritual rhythm,” Francillon offers. These acoustics are paired with the echoes produced within the harp’s chamber, which in itself is like a sound bath, hinting at various meditation practices. Francillon has noted the “healing frequency” that music offers, having discovered the music of the harp as a remedial outlet while she was in college studying religion and philosophy. Cassie Watson Francillon’s Lanati invites you to ground yourself as you touch grass. —Veronica Cross
Fortune is the sophomore release from New Orleans-based band Gold Connections. Originally formed at the College of William and Mary by vocalist Will Marsh before he moved to New Orleans in 2021, the current iteration of the band consists of Marsh’s cousin Fraser Wright on guitar, and Motel Radio’s Eric Lloyd and Andrew Pancamo on drum and bass, respectively. The band’s core sound is catchy indie rock and power pop with gothic undertones, Wright’s dynamic guitar hooks and Lloyd and Pancamo’s tight rhythm section complementing Marsh’s emotive vocals. “Stick Figures,” reminiscent of an early Pavement track, turns a sardonic eye to the past: “I dreamed of grad school and marriage / A young romantic, late Obama era / Don’t get hung for a memory / It ain’t a crime like hurting private property.” Other standouts include the darkly funny “Fool’s Gold” and “Ammunition,” which tackles civil unrest and suburban fear with an opening riff that could have been written by The Cars. There is a palpable tension inherent throughout Fortune as Marsh grapples with the chaos and grief of the past few years at both personal and existential levels. While no neat conclusions are made—there seldom are, if ever, with grief—Fortune is a reminder of the balm that music can provide as we try to find our way to the other side. (Gold Connections will be at Saturn Bar on March 16.) —Mary Beth Campbell
In a city known for its myriad of music—especially jazz, available almost anywhere and everywhere—it’s no wonder so many fusion groups have sprouted, including Or Shovaly Plus, the eponymous group led by guitarist Or Shovaly. Shovaly has been playing jazz, funk, blues, Latin, world fusion, and traditional New Orleans repertoire around the city for years—most notably as the lead guitarist for local Afrobeat group Kumasi, and is credited on all three albums the group has released (Togetherness, 2015; Akoben, 2018; and Live at Marigny Studios, 2021). This five track EP, made possible by Shovaly being one of 40 recipients of the Foundation for Louisiana’s 2024 World Makers Awards grant, is a smooth, relaxed foray into soul jazz and world fusion. Tracks one through four are original compositions, and track five is a new arrangement of a New Orleans standard, “St. James Infirmary.” Shortly after receiving this EP, I was pleasantly surprised to walk into an event I was working at and find the group setting up for a performance. Live, the band brings a bit more energetic fun to the stage while maintaining the album’s laid-back grooves. —Daniella Cherner
After a decade of relative quiet and 15 years with no new releases, Dax Riggs returns to the scene with 7 Songs For Spiders, a tight, intentional collection of tracks that only serves to deepen the mythos surrounding the dark crooner. Opener “deceiver” was the first track shared last fall as a teaser for the album release, and it sets the stage for the tone of the whole record with its prominent drum work, fuzzed out guitar, and cryptic lyricism (“Ain’t no great deceiver / Ain’t no bride of Jesus either“). A bit of dark synth brightens up the dirge of “sunshine felt the darkness smile” while “even the stars fall” is a trippy, dark little love song featuring a unique vocal isolation and modulation that feels primed for alternative radio play. “blues for you know who” puts Riggs’ singular, soulful vocals on full display before “ain’t that darkness” sways in, all simmering sludge (“I walked the web on down that line / let the sun set on my mind / Some damn demon thing / Got me by the tail again / Oh but ain’t that darkness”). The contemplative and immersive backbeat of “pagan moon” slides seamlessly into closer “graveyard soul,” an uptempo number that leaves the listener wanting more. Clocking in at under 30 minutes front to back, the album feels like a delectable, if agonizingly brief, appetizer for a fanbase that’s been starving for so long.
—Erin Hall
From New Orleans’ small but mighty metal scene has emerged SLOWHOLE, a group making noisy, all-encompassing, doom-sludge-black metal. Those (like me) more unfamiliar with metal and its subgenres may not immediately hear the shoegaze elements within that denote the Bandcamp tag “blackgaze,” but the shoegaze influence becomes rather clear on tracks “STAR CRUCIFIED,” “ONLY PAIN & SUFFERING WILL MAKE YOU REALIZE WHO YOU ARE,” and “BIRTHER.” “STAR CRUCIFIED” opens with a clip from Andrzej Zulawski’s 1981 film Possession, before the bass melody begins, giving way to the rest of the track. “ONLY PAIN & SUFFERING WILL MAKE YOU REALIZE WHO YOU ARE” opens with a guitar arpeggio reminiscent of Midwest emo, with a different kind of scream-sung lyrics to follow—deep, guttural, violence instead of indie rock emotion. “BIRTHER” takes up almost a third of the album’s runtime with a slower tempo and grungier feel than the rest of the tracks, and closes out with a different clip from Possession amidst the sound of bells. To the uninitiated, all forms of metal and other “heavy” genres may seem to blend together, but here SLOWHOLE offers enough variety, exploration, and raw, screaming feeling to not bog listeners down. —Daniella Cherner
Sophie Allison, better known by stage name Soccer Mommy, came to the attention of the wider indie world in 2018 with her third full-length release, Clean, on Fat Possum Records. She makes singer-songwriter indie rock ingrained with a ‘90s alt-rock ethos and a heavy dose of yearning, similar to artists like Momma, Mitski, and Phoebe Bridgers. Her earlier full-length releases (For Young Hearts, 2016; Collection, 2017; and the aforementioned Clean, 2018) lean towards a moodier, almost grungy and more melancholic style as compared to her more recent works. “3am at a Party” off For Young Hearts and “Your Dog” off Clean, for instance, were mainstays on the playlists of certain indie types from 2016 to 2021, especially young women for whom her lyrics and sound of loneliness and adolescence resonated. Evergreen is not a stark departure from her earlier work, but rather a maturation and growth in style. She still retains her confessional, heavier grunge-pop style that made her earlier albums so popular with young indie women of the late 2010s, especially present on “Driver,” “Salt In Wound,” and “Anchor.” Though the rest of the album may be less disaffected than her earlier work, that brooding layer of wariness is still there. —Daniella Cherner
In Big Wrap, Forearm, Wesley Chavis offers an intimate autobiographical collection of poems, letters, and prayers that feels, as the title suggests, adjacent to a warm hug or a hit of morphine. This book reads like a diary—with no chronological order, each work seamlessly transitions to the next as Chavis shares his experience as a queer Christian breaking free from internalized homophobia. Chavis begins with “A Clearing in the Heart of Maine,” a poem recalling what seems like the beginning of his desires for fornication and romantic relationships. He writes, “A powdered stroke of sky fall bled across aspen trees. Across our children grown into a clearing. So much potential, found and honored by lightning bugs. In shadow, caroling cephalopodsss secreting this eruption of fear, of awestruck melanin found its own.” Chavis then pivots to more personal and provocative statements about his sexuality, written so delicately in pink in the last stanza of the poem, “I Don’t Trust Myself Anymore.” He writes, “He rimmed me with my face facedown into his pillow {biting and sucking the powder blue case in moonlight}. If I get AIDS, I’ll remember this moment as a missed opportunity for pleasurable asphyxiation. What a way to meet Jesus” to showcase his growth garnered by an absolute trust and acceptance of self through spirituality. Within this book is Chavis’ odyssey from shame to empowerment. Despite his conflicting emotions towards sex because of his Christianity, Chavis doubles down on his duty to feel those emotions anyway. In “Journal Entry: Day 1 of the Ignation Spiritual Exercises / Sept 2022,” Chavis invites the reader to witness the unraveling of the metaphoric holy silk wrapped around Jesus (birthed by Virgin Mary) as Chavis narrates a number of intimate experiences he himself has with Christ which undermine the harsh, judgemental, and condemning demeanor that many Christians lead with. Instead, Chavis paints a picture of humor, kindness, and most controversially, the acceptance of lust in homoerotic fantasies in prayer. He writes in the third paragraph, “The second thing I imagined was…Mm. Well. So, I was sitting on the lap of Jesus, my husband. He opened one side of his robe to reveal his torso and cock.” Chavis’ journey only continues from here. Pick up a copy, maybe it’ll unravel something inside you that you never thought you knew or needed. —Nijah Narcisse
Sara Gran‘s Claire DeWitt series, set chiefly in New Orleans and the Bay Area, has consistently delivered a modern take on the hardboiled detective tradition, with the twist that Gen X private eye DeWitt is an adherent of an esoteric, philosophy-heavy European school of detection. Like Netflix‘s Jessica Jones or for that matter, The X-Files, the series is at its strongest when its heroine focuses on actual detective work instead of getting bogged down in the overarching mythos. In this collection of short stories, some featuring DeWitt and other detectives from her extended universe, Gran playfully—and beautifully—explores various detective story forms, including classic noir, a country house mystery, a Nancy Drew-style girl detective yarn, and the microfiction puzzlers that inspired the title. Few, if any, are true whodunits, and Gran uses the techniques of the genre to do what mystery does best: probing the quandaries of human nature, mortality, and the limitations of understanding. The stories’ brevity gives Gran’s stylistic experimentations enough room to blossom without becoming overladen with backstory or degenerating into parody, and her skill and obvious affection for the genre make the collection resonate with new possibilities for extending mystery’s well-worn forms. —Steven Melendez
In The Flat Woman, author and Loyola professor Vanessa Saunders’ debut novel, the reader enters a stark, dystopian near-future in which women have become the scapegoat for the worsening climate crisis. The novel follows an unnamed female narrator, who since childhood has lived through one trauma after another. Her mother is imprisoned for alleged ecoterrorism while the narrator is still a child. Impoverished as a young adult, the narrator is forced to take a low-paying job at the nefarious Pops Cola, a megacorporation that produces most of the world’s pollution, then begins a relationship with an environmental activist-turned Elvis impersonator who is far less supportive than he seems. She also does her best to hide her strange condition: Her body has “leaky boundaries,” taking on the physical properties of the animals and objects that surround her at inopportune times. Saunders’ sensorial, vivid descriptions of this ash-covered world where the heat is unrelenting and the animals, poisoned by pollution, interact with people in bizarre ways, are one of the book’s strengths. The Flat Woman also asks us to consider some thorny questions: Who can call themselves a good person when most of us are forced to participate in systemic destruction? How do individuals with different levels of power grapple individually and amongst one another with the concept of personal responsibility? —Paula Ibieta
University of Washington Bothell Professor Nora Kenworthy has for a decade studied medical cost crowdfunding on sites like GoFundMe, where many turn for help with the costs of health care and illness. As she documents here, in detailed and scrupulously cited prose still accessible to nonacademic readers, crowdfunding is no substitute for formal social programs. Even people who consider their campaigns fairly successful often don’t receive nearly enough to cover expenses, especially for chronic conditions requiring long-term care and medication. Crowdfunding also mirrors existing inequities, Kenworthy shows. White, wealthy, and well-connected people disproportionately channel help from their existing networks. And getting donations from strangers takes luck and often requires recipients to portray themselves as conventionally deserving—and to communicate skillfully through written English, photos, and videos. Crowdfunding may also do harm, she suggests, in further normalizing a system that tells sick people to go fund themselves. Kenworthy compares crowdfunding to Victorian orphanages where donors voted on which fatherless children to admit, and the infamous game show Queen for a Day, where audience members chose which needy contestant would get a cash prize. Without denying crowdsourcing’s benefits for some, she urges readers to consider forms of advocacy and mutual aid that address systemic problems for the long term. —Steven Melendez
As somewhat of a Bob Dylan agnostic, I came into James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown without much prejudgment or expectation. Though I’ve never been terribly moved by Dylan’s music or aura, I did grow up with good memories of my mom playing his records on the family turntable, and I have much respect for those countless friends and artists who have grown creatively under his massive shadow. As Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra recently wrote in a newsletter, “I was on edge, ready to attack and critique this adaptation of a time in history that has consumed my imagination since I first began writing songs.” I was mostly curious to see if the famously boyish-yet-rapidly-advancing Timothée Chalamet could pull it off. And I must say, I was pretty floored by the film and can’t stop thinking about it. You may be relieved to know that Segarra was also impressed: “I couldn’t believe it but, within minutes of watching a young Bob walk into the hospital to greet an ailing Woody Guthrie, I relaxed. It was..good. Really good. Almost impossible to achieve.” A Complete Unknown focuses on the time between 1961 and when Dylan infamously goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Zeroing in on this time period is one of many choices that keeps the film deftly aloft and away from biopic cliche—though more studied Dylan fans may not find much new information here. But where A Complete Unknown really shines is as a testament to big-budget, old-school, gargantuan concept filmmaking. Every set is drenched in meticulous period-appropriate production design—a credit to François Audouy, whom director James Mangold has collaborated with previously on films such as Logan and Ford v Ferrari. Whether it’s Woody Guthrie’s hospital, a Columbia recording studio, the apartment of love interest Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), the hotel rooms of Newport, the coffee shops and clubs of Greenwich Village, or expansive shots of 1960s New York City streets, every frame is packed with texture. The film is also a musician’s delight, featuring a plethora of detailed instrument and studio dressing, and goes to great lengths to prove the actors’ chops, whether it’s Chalamet performing Dylan in real time (or speeding off, sans helmet, on a Triumph motorcycle), or Monica Barbaro channeling Joan Baez. Perhaps the greatest trick this film pulls off is the pairing of Chalamet—a kind of Clark Gable or John Travolta type generational talent and star—with Dylan, ingratiating Gen Z to this Baby Boomer giant, a Titanic-level achievement in terms of cultural-historical fusion. A most ironic, most poetic outcome of A Complete Unknown could be—much to the surprise of the Newport Folk Festival old guard, who saw Dylan’s performance that fateful year as a threat to their puritanical vision of folk music—that this film serves as a gateway for today’s kids to discover the singular, personal heart and soul of songwriting.
—Dan Fox
The highly anticipated remake of the German Expressionist vampire masterpiece seems like the perfect film for director Robert Eggers, who shot to notoriety with his feature film directorial debut The Witch. Nosferatu tells the story of a young married couple in 1800s Germany who get entangled in the ancient horny plan of Count Orlok, a mysterious, rich man with nefarious vibes who has a psychic hold on the world around him. While Eggers has a reputation for painstakingly recreating historically accurate period pieces, the overall tone of the film is less meticulously developed. The occasional slapstick antics of Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe) are a welcome bit of entertainment, but make the convulsing night terrors of Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) and the rasping, drawling speech of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) lose their gravitas in context. While the cinematography, costuming, sets, and spooky shadows are nothing short of perfection, the film—like Orlok’s disgusting, deteriorating body—lacks a beating heart. What makes The Witch such an unforgettable film of fearful suspense while Nosferatu appears as a perfectly rendered portrait with no light behind the eyes? And what makes Pennywise so scary, but Count Orlok look like a muppet? They showed the monster too much, and between the few good bits of dialogue and notable shots exists a bland story that seems like AI-generated autofill. Unfortunately, this won’t make my rewatch list of vaguely Christmas-adjacent movies next December. —Kallie Tiffault
I have visited Blas Isasi’s sculptural installation 1,001,532 CE at the old Ford Motor Plant in Arabi multiple times since its opening within Prospect.6 last November, and as “history” has happened over the last few months, the significance and breadth of this work has expanded. Two weeks after this show opened, New Zealand Parliament member Hana-Rawhiti Kareariki Maipi-Clarke invoked a traditional Maori haka (dance) to reject a bill that sought to reinterpret the country’s founding treaty. Prospect.6, which in its sixth iteration is titled The Future Is Present, The Harbinger Is Home, posits New Orleans as a future-forward model for countering systems of lingering colonialism, racism, and climate vulnerabilities. On my first visit, I walked through the installation without consulting the exhibition’s accompanying text because the narrative unfolded in real time. Composed of bentwood and powder-coated steel rods, these linear gestural sculptures present as post-human figures but also as high furniture design, futuristic 3D maps, and even playground equipment; they are cyborgs. A topography of trauma emerges—upon closer inspection, as dark wavy hair sways from Isasi’s metal and bentwood disfigured figures, realistic fingers are pierced by metal rods. Note the proximity to the Chalmette Battlefield, recalling dueling colonial powers on Indigenous land. Peruvian-born, Isasi’s project was inspired by the Battle of Cajamarca of 1532, when Spanish colonial powers massacred the Incan people, which would initiate Spanish and general European colonization across South America. 1,001,532 CE is a reimagining of this event, one million years from now. Isasi’s project arrives at a time when Indigenous rights, land-back initiatives, and stewardship knowledge occupy numerous news cycles—and rightly so.
—Veronica Cross
Architecturally speaking, you wouldn’t think of BJ’s Lounge, Your 9th Ward Living Room, as a particularly good music venue. Its sociable section, around the bar and tables, is spacious and invites conversation, but the music-viewing portion of the dive bar is a sardine can, so your listening experience is low visibility and shoulder-to-shoulder. The music is so good though—between various resident Cuban geniuses, The Unmentionables, Leyla McCalla and Helen Gillet (together!), it’s serving a pretty unbeatable smorgasbord. I recently went to BJ’s for a nightcap after an excellent double bill at the Marigny Opera House (Anna Laura Quinn followed by Sarah Quintana). When we got to BJ’s, Tuba Skinny was playing, the dance floor was going, and it was all such a perfect cherry on top that I proffered my contrition to the architecture. This spot doesn’t need to change a thing.
The best show I saw there last month was a double bill with Anna Moss and Jeffery Broussard & The Nighttime Syndicate to release the latter’s single featuring the former. Anna Moss, who opened, was in her element, and washed in the glory of her Elvis-esque jumpsuit and the honey and gravel of her croon, the sardine can was charmingly snug. The Nightime Syndicate single she sang on was “Hello Baby,” a jaunty wink of a zydeco song made famous by Rosie Ledet. A New Orleans scene singer covering an Acadiana Queen is just the kind of unlikely overlap that makes the Nighttime Syndicate so special. Led by zydeco legend Jeffery Broussard and backed by New Orleans musicians, including a few TBC Brass Band horn players, the band was conceived by the New Orleans musician and arranger Romain Beauxis to achieve the impossible: successfully merging the oil and water of New Orleans and Lafayette music. But this band proves there’s really no reason for the entrenchment. On one of their mournful, accordion-led tracks, “Richest Man,” a beautiful round robin of solos from these newly united instruments showed they should have been grooving together all along. The horns restrain their power here, always felt but never obtrusive, and all sound is folded into Broussard’s nimble and soulful accordion. My Mexican friend beside me observed with delight that his accordion bears a Mexican flag, a testament to music’s habit of crossing borders as if they were nonexistent. The last song was Sam Cooke’s musical medicine, “A Change is Gonna Come,” and the band’s particular instrumental textures drew me as deep into the song as I always want to be. I had the poignant realization that here, in Your 9th Ward Living Room, a little change has come. New ways of playing with old musical stories, new creative kinship ties, new fans swaying to this brand new Louisiana sound. —Holly Devon
If you’ve never had an encounter with Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, I’d liken it to a long conversation with an insane person. You can follow their thread while they’re talking, but afterwards you realize how far from normal they’ve taken you by how long it takes to return to center. The plot can be summarized as a three hour conversation between two couples following a university faculty party. Nothing explodes, nobody takes their clothes off onstage, but it examines social and individual dysfunction with a fine probe, and what it discovers is the haunting at the center of the American psyche.
When I heard The Fire Weeds would be putting this play on as their second-ever production, I thought it showed a lot of nerve. The characters are all heavy lifts—layered, complex, and in the throes of the repressed psychosis that afflicted so many Americans in the Cold War years. George and Martha, the main characters, in particular must do a lot of work—revealing, concealing, manipulating the action. If the actors playing them can’t clear the highest of bars, it is guaranteed to be a very bad time for everyone involved.
You could argue the success of this play comes down to Martha—George is indispensable, but subtle, and Martha’s energy must lift all boats. In this production, you know you’re safe from the moment Martha, played by Lin Gathright, enters stage right, slurring her first declaration of the night. “What a dump!” Gathright brays, and there’s Martha: acerbic, coquettish, vulgar, and hilarious, with all the charisma required to make us believe her guests, played by Jaclyn Bethany and Logan Macrae, wouldn’t immediately run screaming from the freaky marital circus they keep getting drawn deeper into. You can’t help but want to know what Martha will say or do next, and the way her habitual line stepping tangos with George’s premeditated provocations mesmerizes like a cobra. So of course Honey and Nick always take another drink when it’s offered, though nothing good can come of it—anyone watching would do the same.
Together, the actors move fluidly through the night’s many conversational tensions: between husbands and wives, respectability and inner desires, fantasy and the ugly truth. Jaclyn Bethany gives unexpectedly sharp comic timing to her rendition of the pathos-riddled Honey, stealing a good few scenes with this often more passive role, and Logan Macrae is the quintessential all-American Nick. Casey Groves plays a pitch perfect George, moving with the wilting slipperiness that both reinforces and helps him evade his wife’s constant emasculation, while maintaining the quiet ferocity with which he gets in the ring with her again and again, bloodied but never knocked out. “George and Martha, sad, sad, sad.”
It takes a special kind of freak to love this play, and there’s no doubting the strength of this company’s love—every bit of it is thoroughly thought through. The sets, with their perfect mid-century modern decor, are meticulously designed, and their foreground and background are cleverly used. There are carefully chosen props at the entrance—books, maps, records—to make you feel as if you are entering their apartment, and the audience is right up there in the room with them, sitting inches from the emotional disintegration happening onstage, an experience so intimate as to be uncomfortable. It is, however, the discomfort you come to the theater to feel. It’s good to feel electrocuted watching the small tragedy of other people’s lives, to be compelled by your nerves to receive the urgent message from a moment in this country’s history where the need to hold a mirror up to themselves was almost as pressing as it is now. Theatre at its most vital teaches us to love the unlovable, and gives us a glimpse of the face we never want to see reflected back to us. This play does all of that, and more, but it is grueling work, and I thank The Fire Weeds for their service. —Holly Devon
