Stories, like viruses, are transferable. In the brain, in the blood, they mutate and change. Tragedies become comedies; dramas become myths. And in Anne Washburn’s visionary and wackadoo “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play,” revived by the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, an episode of “The Simpsons” becomes an opera and that opera becomes a way for a post-apocalyptic society to take into account all that it has lost.
After a devastating contagion and attendant nuclear meltdowns, the US population has shrunk to maybe a million, maybe half that. In the first act, set in the very near future, somewhere in the Northeast, a few survivors have gathered around what should be a campfire (didn’t the fire department allow it?) to tell stories. Or like this evening, a certain story. Together they make up the events and jokes of ‘Cape Feare’, a season 5 episode of ‘The Simpsons’.
Reminiscent of Sideshow Bob’s prime and Homer’s doofus behavior connects them to a lost world in a way that feels bearable. Real memories are too painful. Memories of a television show – at a time when televisions no longer work – are what they can manage. In the second act, these scattered memories are transformed into a revue. She continues to transmute the third act, completely sung decades later, with music by composer Michael Friedman.
“Mr. Burns” debuted at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington in May 2012, then moved to Playwrights Horizons. September 11 was more vivid in cultural memory a decade ago. One passage contains a haunting reference to twin towers of light. But with the pandemic we have another disaster to absorb, leaving “Mr. Burns” directed by the festival’s artistic director, Davis McCallum, a timely selection. (Will there always be a new disaster? Will this piece always be of the moment? Yes. Probably. Ugh.) In its invention, its cool ruthlessness, its questioning of why and how we use stories, it’s not outdated at all.
In a way, with its sandy floor and cheerful tent, the festival offers an ideal location. The opening at the back of the tent overlooks some old trees. Even looking at the mowed lawn—a concession to picnickers and the tick-averse—suggests what the landscape might look like if nature made a comeback. (Had the view shown the recently decommissioned Indian Point nuclear power plant, located just off the Hudson, that would have been even more suggestive.) But the piece was built for a proscenium stage, not three-quarter seats, and McCallum and his designers sometimes battle for the action. visible to all, especially in the last act.
The acting here is uneven, the rhythms off at times, though Sean McNall, a festival veteran, has a great turn on as a newcomer to the first act, and Merritt Janson, a welcome Off-Broadway presence, does pointed and specific work as an actor-manager in the second. Zachary Fine, who operates very quietly in the first two acts, is victorious in the third. During that act, a choir member hit a drum right in my ear, which I could have done without.
And yet, if you’re in the area and you can book a seat outside that drum, you’d say “Mr. Burns.” Here’s why: It seems to me that no new artwork – theater, television, film, fiction – produced in recent years has truly represented the pandemic, at least as I have experienced it.Sometimes they felt further away the more they were on the nose (‘Station Eleven’, so to speak).
“Mr. Burns’ doesn’t capture it exactly either, but it captures something else. Over the past two years, when I’ve had a moment of downtime, I’ve turned to comedies and procedural shows, shows that give the world a regular look. and recognizable feeling. “Mr. Burns” explores the ways in which we use stories, even seemingly irrelevant stories, to make sense of our lives. “Mr. Burns’ is a play about where we find comfort and it’s also, more chillingly, about the limits of that comfort, about how reality can set in even before the credits roll.
Reality sometimes intruded, even here, outside the city, outside. The show’s opening was delayed due to coronavirus cases among the cast. The spectators closest to the actors were asked to wear masks; most did. Still, we might lose ourselves for a while imagining how a society like ours could handle a disaster far worse than this one, how we might or might not get through it. To see this feels pleasurable and painful and mysterious and weird. Or to put it another way: D’Oh.
mr. Burns, a post-electric play
Through September 17 at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Garrison, NY; hvshakespeare.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
