Armed with a loaded pellet gun or her toy bow and arrow, essentially holding down the fort in an isolated Midwestern farm house, your initial impression of spunky 12-year-old Edith might be as a distaff version of the Macaulay Culkin character from “Home Alone.”
But don’t sell “Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them” so short. It is a generally thoughtful and telling new play by A. Rey Pamatmat that develops into a bittersweet coming-of-age story.
Abandoned by their parents -- the mother died years ago and the father is living with his girlfriend in another place -- Edith and her 16-year-old brother, Kenny, are left to their own devices to fend for themselves, compelled to grow up too soon. Together with Benji, the “study buddy” from school with whom Kenny falls in love, they form a decidedly unconventional but relatively functional family unit.
Except for an eerily imagined bit of shadow play that ends the first act, none of the adults in their lives is anywhere to be seen in the show, a dramatic device that starts to wear thin and strain credibility as the story deepens. They’re usually on the other end of a telephone line or sitting in a car just outside, thus leaving it to the mouths of babes to relate whatever their parents are thinking and feeling or saying and doing.
Indeed, Pamatmat occasionally burdens his three characters with speeches that are wise beyond their years, when they sound less like young kids than like a grown-up playwright. Conversely, his depiction of the budding gay romance between Kenny and Benji is rather refreshing in its frankness and maturity, so a scene in which they’re giddily looking up sexual terms in the dictionary seems tantamount to a cheap laugh (or at least an overly precious one).
“Edith Can Shoot Things,” a product of the National New Play Network, began its rolling world premiere during this year’s Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Throughout the 2011-12 season, there will be separate stagings of the show with companies in Miami, Minneapolis and Sacramento, in addition to Atlanta.
Here, in his warmly realized Actor’s Express production, artistic director Freddie Ashley elicits genuinely heartfelt performances from young adult co-stars Rose Le Tran (as Edith), Ralph Del Rosario (Kenny) and Tucker Weinmann (Benji), who delivers a particularly touching moment musing on the “infinitely divisible” wonders of space.
To Pamatmat’s credit, “Edith” is equally affecting both as a story about neglected siblings and as a coming-out tale of first love. Late in the play, as outside forces are closing in around them, the kids stop by the food court of the local mall to share some ice cream in a scene that basically says it all.
As undeniably poignant as it is that Kenny and Benji can only comfort one another by furtively holding hands under the table, the mood suddenly shifts to hopeful optimism as the three of them get up to leave, hand in hand in hand to make their way in the world.
Theater review
“Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them”
Grade: B
Through Nov. 26. 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. $25-$30. Actor’s Express, 887 W. Marietta St., Atlanta (King Plow Arts Center). 404-607-7469. actors-express.com.
Bottom line: Mostly on the mark, if not quite a bull’s eye.
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