Checking out Autobahn

Friday evening, Linda and I went to the 2007-2008 Drake Theatre Department season opener, Autobahn by Neil LaBute. This presentation was more a collection of seven smaller plays played in sequence on the same stage. It's tempting to call these plays vignettes but I'm not familiar enough with the term to use it without this rambling text warning that it may not be truly applicable. Whatever they were, they were interesting.

The only thing that connected these stories was the set. Each was set in the front seat of a car. The stage was overly long in front, suggesting the hood of the car. On the floor to the left and right of the stage, just at the feet of the audience on those sides, were the highway lane marking lines. A steering wheel, accelerator, and brake petal were positioned for the driver. On the plain screen behind the seat, an image out the back window was displayed for each scene. It was simple in appearance but also clear that time and thought had gone into the design.

Of the seven vignettes, three were simply monologues with another person there. I'm sure that many of us have been on trips like those. I say trip but these weren't necessarily trips of any length longer than across town. Linda noticed that most of them also had some sort of word play, or an uncommon use of a word, sometimes repeatedly. I noticed that they also tended to start out pretty normal and, as the picture became clearer, they often got a little strange, a little dark.

The cast for these plays was only four people in various combinations of two. There were two senior men and two freshman women. All did an excellent job in their respective and varied roles. One of the men we had seen in a Drake production last year. It's nice to have that continuity.