See this play!

I just got back from a performance of a show called "Safe Home" by Sean Cullen. It was amazing and you should all see it.

When I first arrived at the theater, I felt a little out of place because I was there with my mom and still wearing a backpack while the rest of the theater-goers were hipster twenty-somethings that all seemed to know each other. I kind of regretted choosing this show. Then we entered the theater, and a few minutes later, honestly, none of that mattered. We all laughed at the same parts, cried at the same parts, and came out moved (or at least, it seemed that way).

To summarize, "Safe Home" tells the story of a family--a mother, a father, and three sons--affected by the Korean War. The first son enlists, against the wishes of his parents, and ends up dying (I'm not giving anything away...you realize this within the first five or so minutes). The show then, instead of merely letting us observe how this family reacts to such a tragedy, mixes up the chronology of the play, and begins flipping forward and backward to give us a sense of who these people were before the war.

I found the acting in this play to be really phenomenal, and the set/costumes were interesting to look at and fitting for the time. For such a small theater, they really created a genuine environment, including traditional 50s music that played in between scenes.

But aside from all of this, all of these accolades about the acting and direction and design, I have to commend the writing! I was, first of all, really happy to realize that I would be able to specifically say something about this, and second of all, happy to realize that the writing consciously helped to make the play better in my mind. I thought that the manipulation of chronology was an amazing tool. Although getting into the rhythm of this was difficult at first, and I did find the order of events a little confusing throughout, by the end, it hardly mattered because of the overall effect that it had on the play. What flipping back and forth between pre-enlistment and post-enlistment did was allow us to feel more of a sense of what this death meant. Starting off the play with a death was definitely a risk, because although we as an audience realize its implications, we feel hardly any sympathy because we haven't established a relationship with the now-gone character yet. But then the fact that I was then able to see the entire sequence of events leading up to the son's choice to enlist made his death heartbreaking, even though, after seeing it in the beginning, I knew it was coming all along.

All in all, you should see this show! I'm not sure when its run ends (I think it's soon) but I had a really great time and came out of the theater very moved...and apathetic about the swarming, intimidating hipsters.