Iris is an astronaut. She travels through space. Iris is also a chrononaut. She travels through time. And that’s where her troubles begin as the protagonist of The Interstellar Ghost Hour, Kathleen Akerley’s latest fall annual auteur production, often seen as the opening volley of the season, especially for shows made for and by local artists.
Akerley’s plays are brain teasers, both for her characters and her audience members, and Interstellar Ghost Hour is no exception. Poor Iris discovers that travelling across years and light-years to visit your dead parents isn’t as easy as she thought it might be. How is she going to get the closure she needs when she finds herself in an uncontrollable recursive snare in spacetime? We discover that travelling into Akerley’s world isn’t easy either. How is she going to connect Iris’s childhood and Hammurabi’s Code and lots of cooking metaphors into a cohesive whole? And what does the giant TV on the set have to do with it?
The audience’s question turns out to be more interesting than Iris’s. Akerley’s plays often feel like codes, but unlike Hammurabi’s, Akerley’s code doesn’t have a clear cipher for translation. She’ll give you just enough to tease out some meaning for yourself, and that makes her work like Interstellar Ghost Hour rewarding on second viewing or, at least, a long discussion over post play drinks. You’ll often find what you thought just happened quite different from your neighbor’s perspective.
In other words, a lazy look at Interstellar Ghost Hour might see a confusing mess, but there’s plenty of order, just in the sense that the rules of a puzzle make the disordered ordered. Si this play is the Times Crossword, not the Junior Jumble.
After that paragraph, you probably already know whether this play is your cup of tea, but there’s a lot more going on, since good and some not, than figuring out the strange loops of Iris’s spacetime warped home life. And this reviewer is grateful for that. Could there be a more mundane place to visit than the spacetime spiritual resting place of one’s less than stellar parents? How does a being who has figured out interdimensional travel NOT figure out that there is no such thing as a childhood that Means Something [sic]? Must we endure another female protagonist infantalized by primary obstacles centered on domesticity and a toxic man?
For Interstellar Ghost Hour, we must. Christine Alexander as Iris delivers plenty of angst in her acting choices to justify her textual characterization. But the characters and their actors that surround her provide more meaty fodder for the mind.
Ryan Sellers shows off versatility and solid fundamentals as the flunky of several realities Iris wanders into, especially as a perplexed homeowner desperate to rid his on-the-market home of weird phenomena. Moriamo Akibu charms as the de-charmer he hires while Dylan Arredondo drips pro acting chops in varied roles. You’ll see both of them flaunt larger roles on bigger stages in no time if there’s any justice in the theater world.
There’s another character who dominates the script and scene of Interstellar Ghost Hour, a steadily more consistent companion in Akerley plays: a giant projection screen. This play has a significant video component, full of hackneyed late night style shows watched by the characters in the vein of Tim & Eric. The clunkyness of the shooting is funny and purposefully so, but like a bar with too many screens, the frequent filmed interludes feel like they are interrupting an in-progess conversation.
That conversation is what makes this play really enjoyable. Akerley has a gift for both playwright-ese, a language of heart-gripping simile, and heartfelt relationship dialogue. Both take one by delighted surprise throughout the play, though mostly in the second act, which is the cipher to the first act’s code. You might be tempted to give up on this play at the act break, as Iris’s ventures through space and time and repetition stretch the minutes, but you’ll be much happier if you hold on for the second.
Interstellar Ghost Hour will work your brain and perhaps your nerves, but finishing it will give you the satisfaction of solving Kathleen Akerley’s spacetime puzzle.
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The Interstellar Ghost Hour, written and directed by Kathleen Akerley. Featuring Scott Ward Abernathy, Moriamo Temidaayo Akibu, Christine Alexander, Dylan Arredondo, Ryan Sellers, Julie Weir, and an extensive video cast. Scenic design by Elizabeth Jenkins McFadden. Lighting Design by Mary Keegan. Props Design and Stage Management by Solomon “Solo” HaileSelassie. Sound Design by Neil McFadden. Video Design by Seamus Miller. Costume Design by Lynly Saunders. Dramaturgy by Abigail Werner. Produced by Longacre Lea. Reviewed by Alan Katz.
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