It is always a pleasure to watch a gifted actor strut her stuff. The Seattle Repertory Theater’s one-woman show “The K of D, an Urban Legend” provides audiences with just such an opportunity.
Renata Friedman transforms herself into approximately 16 different characters in Laura Schellhardt’s spooky summer tale that takes place in Saint Mary’s, Ohio, a “small town you might pass on your way to someplace else.”
As the narrator identified in the program as “The Girl,” Friedman introduces us to the Pack, a group of teenagers who spend the summer hanging out at the broken down dock by the lake and spinning stories about their neighbors. Even with the large number of characters introduced in rapid succession, the audience has little difficulty distinguishing between them, thanks to Friedman’s impressive morphing ability under Braden Abraham’s excellent direction.
The summer begins with a tragedy: a young teenage boy, Jamie McGraw, is killed in a traffic accident. As the summer unrolls, so do the urban legends which, as “The Girl” points out, seem to always take place in rural settings. Jamie’s twin sister, skinny Charlotte McGraw, may have received a deadly gift (“The K of D” is shorthand for the kiss of death) from her brother’s dying kiss. An award-winning teacher may have plotted to eliminate her competition. A dead boy may have returned as a heron. All these stories bring back memories of youthful summer evenings spent around a campfire or at a slumber party after lights out. Nostalgic too is the notion of a pack of teenagers with a summer of nothing but unsupervised time compared to today’s summers of structured activities and supervised play dates.
A less successful aspect of the play is the American Gothic depiction of St. Mary’s and its adult population of sadists, abusive parents and psychotics. None of these characters are developed much beyond stereotype, and whose presence has the unfortunate effect of pulling the audience away from the cozy campfire of summer stories.
Contributing to the spine tingling effects are Braden Abraham and L.B. Morse’s effective set of the dock hangout with lakeside reeds that bend and flutter with the wind (or is it really only the wind?). Robert Aguilar’s moody lighting effectively reflects in the stage’s shiny lake surface, and Matt Starritt’s evocative sound effects range from the eerie cry of a heron to the sound of a lid slapped onto a jar of fireflies.
At the start of the play, The Girl defines some characteristics of urban legend specifically that the story is never about the teller, but about a friend or acquaintance. But is The Girl actually the adult Charlotte? And if so, was her tale more than an urban legend? These and other mysteries continue to haunt the audience long after the applause dies down.
Through Feb. 20. www.seattlerep.org.
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