String at Village Theatre

It was just another Wednesday… no, it was a Thursday when I braved I-90 to get to Village Theatre in Issaquah for a performance of their original production, String. I’d been pitching a story about how String, the first musical to complete both Village Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals and Beta Series, was a sign of things to come from Village Theatre’s Originals program. I still think there’s a story there, but apparently, I’m not the person to sell it. Anyway, I got to see String, and I’m glad about that.

Getting There

I left almost directly from school pick-up to beat rush hour, but it still took 75 minutes to get to Village Theatre. On the plus side, 75 minutes is probably better than what I would have dealt with if I left at five. And arriving so early meant I found a free parking spot on Front Street almost in front of the theater. I checked out a great little tea shop, had fish tacos at Max’s World Café (soon to be breakfast only – sadness) and shared a cupcake with my third-grader at before the doors opened.

Seattle has such a rich theater scene, I feel like we can let the suburbs have one great theater without having to be part of it. Every time I’m stuck in traffic on Aurora and then again on I-90 and then again on Front Street on my way to Village Theatre, I swear it’s the last time I’m going to slog through traffic to get to a small theater in the suburbs.

String

But this time the premise of String pulled me in. After falling out of favor with Zeus, the Fates find themselves banished to Earth. Now living and working in a modern skyscraper in the mortal world, the eldest sister falls in love and the very fabric of the universe begins to unravel. Anything based on Greek mythology sparks interest in my post-Percy Jackson household. My daughters fought for the second of my two press tickets. The third-grader played her trump card – “You got to see Hamilton.” Her big sister conceded.

It was a bonus when we discovered that her school’s music teacher, Eric Ankrim, was playing Mickey, the hapless basement-dwelling security guard who captures the heart of Inexorable Fate. (At least it was a bonus until the kissing started; that made her squirm.) No human woman would have him, but goofy,  guileless Mickey is just the breath of fresh air that the eldest Fate, Atropos, needs after thousands of years looking after her sisters in the human world and working without a break.

Producing String

If your mythology is rusty, the Fates are:

• Atropos – the eldest, whose name means “inevitable,” cuts the thread of life. (So, death.)
• Lachesis – the middle, whose name means “allotter,” measures each thread. If you take the string metaphor too literally, she wouldn’t be much different from Atropos, but she’s not really measuring the length of a life so much as its value and accomplishments.
• Clotho – the youngest, whose name means “spinner,” spins the thread of each life. She determines when each life begins, essentially giving life. No wonder she’s the cheerful one.

You can see the fates in the Scandinavian Norns and in the trio of witches that English literature inherited from Celtic mythology. They also show up in the female trinity of maiden, mother, crone.

I loved the way they were portrayed in String as three sisters with contrasting personalities that match their jobs. Their modern costumes evoked those personality while still making them stand out as not quite human. And I would kill for their hair. Jessica Skerritt’s Atropos was regal and responsible, but you could just feel her coming apart at the seams. Her voice was unmatched (except by Night’s exquisite Bobbi Kotula). Lauren Du Pree’s Lachesis was all punky, angsty adolescence. My own teen would have been taking notes if she had been there.

Clotho is usually played by Sara Porkalob, whom my family loved as Sophie in Howl’s Moving Castle. She was busy opening her one-woman show on the East coast the week we attended. We were disappointed, but I really enjoyed Sarah Bordenet’s bubbly, naïve interpretation of the character. (Also, she looked so familiar. I’m so sure I’ve seen her in something else it’s killing me that there’s no IMDB for theater.)

Despite the small cast – there’s really only four main characters – they really did a great job of creating a building ecosystem. Nathaniel Tenenbaum as Mickey’s security guard partner was the funniest thing about the show, and still managed to create a touching romantic subplot with the practically nonverbal janitor Geneva (also Bobbi Kotula). Other ensemble characters remained unnamed but lived out their own mini-story arcs on the sidelines.

The sets were fun and used to good effect. I especially liked the elevators. Their empty frameworks gave the actors what will probably be their only chance to mime without irritating people.

Threads of the Story

Like all good stories, String is about a lot of things. Per the press release, String is “about understanding our place in the universe and what it means to be human. It’s a show about Gods, but they deal with the same things we do – sisterhood, love, loss.” I saw those things, for sure, but especially in the first part, String had a lot to say about work. The number, “Just Another Wednesday,” really reminded me why I left the cubicle world. Atropos is exhausted by the burden of responsibility for keeping the fate factory running; Mickey uses double shifts to avoid having to live. Middle sister Lachesis is angry because she hates her job; youngest sister Chlotho likes the work if only the people around her were happier.

That work thread gets lost as the romance and its dangerous consequences develop. There’s an ominous (at least to me) message of “you gotta do what you gotta do,” but for a while the bigger themes of the story get lost in the plot. Which is fine. It’s a fun plot, with lots of “what ifs” to explore, and it gives the actors room to play with character.

I don’t remember if all the myths have the fates weaving the universe out of the threads they make, but the tapestry metaphor really worked for the play. I always like a concrete metaphor, and the Fates’ tapestry work really literalized the concept of “where we fit in the universe.” It also revisits the work theme. Most of the time, the Fates’ job looks like piecework. In the end, when the pattern of the tapestry is (mostly) repaired it’s a hopeful reminder that the work we do is part of a greater whole that can be beautiful. Whether or not your job contributes to the beauty, the story is ultimately more concerned with deeper human relationships: the way love lets us be fully alive, and the way family holds us together when we fall to pieces.

In the end I left the theater thinking, “I’m glad we came. That was totally worth dealing with traffic.”  (For the record, the drive home took exactly 30 minutes.)

Tickets

String runs 2 hours 15 minutes, including intermission.

Tickets cost from $38 – $72

Issaquah Run: March 15 – April 22, 2018

Everett Run: April 27 – May 20, 2018

Just the Facts

Book by Sarah Hammond

Music and Lyrics by Adam Gwon

Directed by Brandon Ivie

Music Directed by Michael Nutting

Music Supervised by R.J. Tancioco

Cast on the day I attended:

Atropos              Jessica Skerritt
Lachesis              Lauren Du Pree
Clotho                Sarah Bordenet
Mickey               Eric Ankrim
O’Brien               Nathaniel Tenenbaum
Geneva/Night    Bobbi Kotula
Zeus                   Michael Feldman
Ensemble           Danny Kam
Cassi Q Kohl
Cherisse Martinelli
Michael Feldman
Bobbi Kotula
Nathaniel Tenenbaum