FTC's The Amateurs is a Flawed Tale for a Dark Time
Forward Theater opened the long overdue production of Jordan Harrison’s The Amateurs in the Playhouse at Overture Center on Nov. 5. Originally scheduled to debut in March 2020, the play was in its final rehearsals when the theater closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After experiencing the play in person, in a mostly-full house, it is easy to see why director Jen Uphoff Gray wanted to keep The Amateurs in FTC’s 2021-’22 season. Her smart, economical directing is supported by a stunning cast, led by Josh Krause and Kat Wodtke. Paired with simple, elegant design by Nathan Stuber (set) and Jason Fassl (lighting), the FTC production actually surpasses the script in demonstrating the power of storytelling, needed most when the world feels darkest.
The Amateurs is separated into three distinct acts. In the first, we meet a ragtag band of actors who are performing morality plays in the 14th century based on stories from the Bible. They wander from town to town, eking out a living, constantly looking for a safe place to take refuge from the plague that is ravaging Europe. Their theater is a monstrously large, elaborate wagon that dominates the Playhouse stage. Watching the shows within the show, the audience marvels at their cleverly painted drops and scrolling sets, special effects made by sound boxes, and puppetry that is, in turn, both clumsy and brilliant. (Monica Kilkus’s costuming that allows one actor to portray five characters is absolute genius.)
But this is far from a merry band of thespians. Matt Daniels is the relentless, domineering director of the troupe, playing God and lecturing the actors on how to present vignettes about the seven deadly sins and the story of Noah and the ark. His players don’t have the energy to protest being upstaged by his booming-voiced deity; they are more interested in merely staying alive. Krause is fascinating and forlorn as Gregory, the mechanically gifted stagehand who is bullied by the director, while Wodtke’s matter-of-fact Hollis is a pensive player whose introspection often distracts her from her cues and assigned, wooden blocking. James Carrington brings real heart to Brom, an actor attracted to another man in the company, and Emily Glick’s Rona is a brooding, bristly, and ultimately lonely woman who struggles with a pregnancy she doesn’t want. Ty Fanning’s Physic is a dispirited outsider whose medical “training” is useless against the current scourge.
Although they preach about the wages of sin and a loving god who saves the faithful after a great flood, individually these actors are far from convinced. As millions die from the plague, the cast hedges their bets, looking for signs in magic cards, ghostly dreams, and medical quackery. They pray to saints to make them different from what they are, rather than for salvation.
And then the second act pulls up a chair, sits down, and asks if you’d like to have coffee with the playwright.
Forward Theater again plays with form, as it did in its first production of the season, Mom, How Did You Meet the Beatles? The Amateurs does this by interrupting the historical narrative with a modern day, direct address from the disarmingly likeable author. As if he’s leading a pre-show talk, Krause’s Jordan explains the genesis of his play, the larger themes, and his fascination with the rise of humanism in literature and arts, complete with visual aids. He also expounds on his own experience with a mysterious medical crisis — the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s — complete with misinformation, panic and death on an alarming scale. To take the abrupt aside even further, Wodtke also takes her turn, explaining how as an actor in A Christmas Carol she was able to mentally reframe her part of Mrs. Cratchit so at least she believed she had agency.
Like the first act, these meta moments in act two also show us actors struggling to figure out the story they want to tell and resolving to keep trying in spite of adversity. Then the third act of the play returns to the 14th century, where the actors eventually find a way to go on through art, in the face of devastation and crushing uncertainty.
Ultimately, The Amateurs is a play that wants to address a lot of subjects simultaneously, switching back and forth between time periods and genres to connect all of the dots that the playwright places — directly or indirectly — throughout the script. While this mushy middle isn’t unwelcome, exactly, it feels like cheating in a play that’s about the transformative power of art. It’s as if the playwright doesn’t trust his material to mean more than it does, so he threw in a “breaking the fourth wall” section that’s a cross between Catholic confession and evangelical testifying to make his points.
When we return to the characters of the Middle Ages, it is clear that they have gotten a lot out of the interstitial pep talk from the author. They are experimenting with making their own decisions and forming relationships with one another instead of remaining servants to an angry master. This is a hopeful take on the future, for both characters and audiences who have weathered the “flood” of a terrifying pandemic and are still here, figuring out how to move forward. And it turns out that art that is elegant, or clumsy, or a little of both, can be as good a sign for the future as a prop dove on the end of a fishing pole with an olive branch in its beak.