Review: Local drama ‘Moxie’ debuts at Theatrical Outfit

Through Feb. 28. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays. $20-$48. Balzer Theater at Herren's, 84 Luckie St. N.W., Atlanta. 678-528-1500, www.theatricaloutfit.org.

Bottom line: Ambitious but flawed.

Theatrical Outfit's premiere production of "Moxie" is a local drama only in the sense that it was conceived and developed here. Co-written by novice playwrights Lane Carlock and Brian Kurlander, better known as two of Atlanta's busier actors, the project received a 2013 Reiser Artists Lab grant under the auspices of the Alliance Theatre, where it was first presented in a couple of staged readings and workshop performances.

But the sprawling scope of the play is decidedly worldlier. From one end of the map to the other, “Moxie” follows a mystical book of stories as it changes hands between people from every walk of life, each of whom makes his or her own personal contribution to its pages: an American father and soldier stationed in the Middle East; a free-thinking young Muslim woman; a former compatriot in the French Resistance during World War II; a Peace Corps volunteer in India; an adolescent schoolboy from inner-city Detroit; and with fleeting stops in Tokyo and Sydney, for good measure.

Directed by Elisa Carlson, the Outfit show gets an immeasurable boost from designer Mike Post’s elaborate video projections and evocative lighting to suggest the play’s varying locations and states of mind. The first story told (by Bobby Labartino as that soldier), about a feral jungle cat (Danielle Deadwyler), is fairly stunning, indeed. Behind all of the projected foliage on screens at the back of Lizz Dorsey’s set, other actors strike poses in silhouette as different animals in the tale.

Regrettably, as the vignettes become less allegorical or mythical and more realistic or in-the-moment, “Moxie” gradually loses its drive and turns tedious. Although it’s billed as a “globe-trotting adventure,” Carlson’s sense of pace tends to be sluggish, as opposed to sweeping. The titular word is defined as an ability to face challenges with spirit and strength — a quality that doesn’t always register in some of the sketchy writing and lackluster acting.

The usually wonderful Carolyn Cook is a bit too precious as the aging Frenchwoman. As a supposedly inspiring teacher, Maria Rodriguez-Sager could use more spark. Not many of the actual youngsters in the cast have a lot of stage presence, but even that beats watching grown-ups Labartino, Deadwyler and Tony Larkin pouring it on as little children in one sequence.

While the three of them fare much better in their other scenes, the finest performances in "Moxie" belong to Jaden Robinson and David de Vries (fresh off their roles as Tiny Tim and Scrooge in the Alliance's "A Christmas Carol"), who come along late in the show as that conscientious Detroit kid and the kindly old bookbinder he befriends.

At one point, someone describes “The Book of Moxie” at the center of the drama as a “labor of love.” The same might be said of Carlock and Kurlander’s play itself, even if the end result is often too labored for its own good.