By Joel Applegate
Cherry Wine in Paper Cups is designed for the COVID-19 age. By turns cautious, reckless, and suspicious, the play is performed by three actors outdoors in the unique style of Salt Lake City’s ever-thought-provoking theatre company, Sackerson Theatre.
Through wireless headphones you’ll experience this almost cinematically with your eye as the camera. There’s no theatrical voice projection and the sound and music design by Alex Ungerman (Producer) and Dan Evans running between scenes and beneath the dialogue is well-chosen and well-timed. This is a method perfected with much success during Sackerson’s 2018 outdoor immersive production, Hindsight. Morag Shepherd (Producer) is the local playwright behind both these engaging, original works.
Separate parties are socially scattered among the comfortable slopes of grassy knolls. You can choose to sit near the actors or up on the tops of the little hillocks surrounding the venue. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It is, especially with a temperate autumn at our doorstep. The stage manager, Sam Allen rings a bell to let you know when the performance starts and you can put on your headphones.
Directed with poignancy byDave Mortenson (Producer) and Claire Stucki, our two would-be paramours, Rain and Taylor, engage in a romantic time flip after meeting online and wondering why they are so familiar to each other. The rapport between Merry Magee as Rain and Shawn Francis Saunders as Taylor is facile and fraught with risk. This “almost love story” is narrated by a relaxed and clear Harrison Lind, evolving the device in ominous ways as three possible outcomes for the lovers spin out. Who is he? A guide? An antagonist? The white noise inside the lovers’ heads? It’s up to the audience to decide whether he’s inhabiting the couple’s psyches – or not. (The roles are alternated in successive performances by Isabel Crews as Rain, Jesse Nepivoda as Taylor and Barrett Ogden as the Narrator.)
So, what’s it about? It’s about self-conscious needing. It’s self-referential, defensive, it’s about great pacing as Magee and Saunders break the ice. It’s about switching from gaming to wooing. Taylor, whose imagination assigns color to every experience, “collects colors,” a charming descriptor that Shepherd uses upfront to set a languid, though pensive, tone. It’s hard from an audience point of view to see why these two attract each other. Taylor plays a game of chance, seeing a spark of orange. He pretends it’s going well. But it’s harder each time to start over. “Hope isn’t in endless supply.” Tiny lies are denied; a lob is returned. Rain describes her “melancholy that feels like gold.”
Their first kiss is awkward, obligatory. I wasn’t sure if they were really attracted to each other or just responding to raw need. They talk about their past; a painful praying for forgiveness. But then a connection really happens when Saunders takes Magee’s hand for the first time. It’s here when the Narrator starts time-tripping – or is he interfering? He declares that the colors never mix in the right way for these two. It will never work out for them no matter how many chance meetings occur in this Déjà vu landscape – three times? a hundred times? There are things half-remembered and mis-remembered. I had a Déjà vu of my own. Cherry Wine in Paper Cups pays an unconscious debt to another avant-garde playwright, Harold Pinter. The wall insulating the Narrator has to be shattered. The lovers interact with him fighting to fix themselves, break away from obsessively examined lives, and make a choice: Never let someone get to know you too closely or choose the rough road of intimacy. My advice? Place your heart in a fragile paper cup and carry it bravely to Library Square to see this stirring production.
Cherry Wine in Paper Cups, By Morag Shepherd.
Friday-Sunday through Oct 18, 2020, 6:00 PM, Saturday matinee 2:00 PM Oct 3, 10, 17, 2020.
Note: There is adult language in this play and the acknowledgement that humans have sex.
Tickets Online only at Sackerson.org. $25 for all performances. Sackerson has a “Theatre for All” program where they give away 10% of their tickets. The website has details here: https://sackerson.org/theatre-for-all/
Venue: Southeast corner of Library Square Park in downtown Salt Lake City, 210 East, 400 South 84111.
Audience is limited to 40 socially distanced members. Households are seated 8 – 10 feet apart. Masks are required. Bring blankets and/or camp chairs. Picnickers welcome! Photography with no flash is allowed.
Contact: Hello@sackerson.org
Sackerson Theatre Website
Sackerson Theater For All
Sackerson Theatre Facebook Page
Cherry Wine in Paper Cups Facebook Event
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