Copyright Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
Old Dominion University’s latest show is mostly Greek to me but somehow still compelling, and mostly understandable. Consider this premise for a musical, with a book by Sarah Hammond and music and lyrics by Adam Gwon (2012): The three Greek Fates — Atropos (the excellent Kenzie Moyers), who cuts the string of your life when your time is up; her younger sister Lachesis (Ella Grace Breshears), who measures the string of your life; and her youngest sister Clotho (Meadow Franklin), who spins the string of your life — manage to infuriate Zeus (Eshan Lawson) by cutting the life string of one of his young illicit heartthrobs. (Zeus, you’ll recall from studying mythology in school, has a chronically wandering eye, hands and other body parts.) Thoroughly miffed with the Fates, he tosses them down, down, down from the heights of Olympus, where they had been living happily with their mother Night (Nichanna Gholson-Dennis). The Fates now must inhabit the top floor of the Infinity Office Tower in “a city a lot like New York” at a time “a lot like now,” as the playbill puts it. In “String: A Musical Fable About the Greek Fates in the Modern City,” the three sister Fates, when we catch up with them, do their soul creation and destruction above the heads of 199 floors’ worth of modern office workers — some of whom form our show’s Chorus. This approach is kind of like blending mythic musicals such as “Hadestown” (by Anais Mitchell) or “Eurydice” (by Sarah Ruhl) or even “Pygmalion” (George Bernard Shaw), with office musicals such as “Nine to Five” (starring Dolly Parton) or “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Flying” — excuse me — “Trying.” (Flying is a big theme in our ODU play.) Cleverly directed by Kate Clemons and impressively designed by ODU’s old master Woody Robinson using common materials — such as six giant metal cubes (to suggest the high-rise building) and sliding screens (to suggest walls and all-important elevator doors), and four rattan and yarn human sculptures way up above to suggest, well, our common fate of death) — the play is great while the leads (our sister Fates) and their leading man, security guard Mickey (Cole Rollins), are singing. Things unravel a bit musically, however, when secondary characters such as O’Brien (Taye Russell) join the singing. Russell is enthusiastic and funny but sometimes off key. There’s likewise not much to admire in the instrumental side of the score, since it’s canned rather than live musicians. Still, it serves its purpose in the pinch that is a mostly undergraduate production of ODU Theatre Department and ODU Rep. There’s likewise much to admire in Robinson’s design (on a shoestring budget), which intrigues in its spareness and artistry. A second level built far upstage and aloft serves the plot as the vaunted 200th floor where the three Fates work and sleep, when they’re not sneaking downstairs to plunder the vending machines. What is most to be singled out in live theater on a university level is soulful thought, however, and this piece surely fosters that, even when a bit off key. Our director’s note by Clemons raises issues right at the start, interestingly in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald (who once visited and stayed just minutes away over in the Colonial Place neighborhood of Norfolk). Here’s the quotation Clemons selected: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” These are wise words always. The love affair that develops between the immortal Atropos and the mortal security guard Mickey fits the Fitzgerald quotation like an aphorism. (You thought I was going to say “glove.”) “Things are hopeless” in this play, yet good humans (and Greek gods) must “yet be determined to make them otherwise.” Atropos falls for Mickey slowly but, eventually, completely. The other Fates slowly catch on to the situation and try to be supportive (sort of). Lachesis, the feistiest Fate, tends to see human beings as “specks” (of dirt or dust), but even she eventually has a heart. But pairings of immortals and mortals are notoriously ill-fated and unstable. One day Atropos is handed Mickey’s own life string to cut, and she finds she just cannot do it. And now we have a great big problem that radiates out into the world, turning summer into eternal winter and causing overall mayhem. Things run amok in NYC. Imagine that! What to do? What to do? Should the whole world perish for true love between two individuals? Well, I cannot tell you what happens, for fear of my own life string being prematurely cut. (Is that even possible, given what we now know from this play?) So be brave. Tempt the Fates and see this earnest ODU endeavor. It will entertain, and it will make you think. You can rest assured: I’m not just stringing you along. Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu ___ If you go When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday Where: Old Dominion University’s Goode Theatre, 4601 Monarch Way, Norfolk Tickets: Start at $20, $15 students
