Imagine one of those obligatory montage sequences from any typical movie rom-com, encapsulating in a few brief moments a character’s entire life or relationship with a significant other via quickly edited snippets of highlights and flashbacks. Now, extend that structural device over the duration of a 90-minute stage production, and that should give you the general gist of playwright Tanya Barfield’s refreshingly eccentric “Bright Half Life.”
Continuing through Feb. 27 at Theatrical Outfit, and adroitly directed with a keen precision by the estimable Melissa Foulger (“Far Away,” “Suddenly Last Summer,” “Clybourne Park”), the time-tripping romance spans decades to chart the up-and-down, give-and-take love affair between Erica (Park Krausen), a science writer and teacher, and Vicky (Candy McLellan), a corporate IT specialist — from their tender courtship and adoring marriage, through their subsequent hardships and eventual separation, and, finally, their soulful reconnection.
Barfield’s non-linear narrative technique repetitively takes us back (or forth) in time, revisiting many of the same fleeting scenes over and over, again and again: a date on a carnival Ferris wheel, a skydiving outing, Erica’s marriage proposal to Vicky. On the mostly bare Outfit stage, the set (designed by Ming Chen) consists of only a circular platform and an enormous image of the moon as a backdrop. With just a flick of the lighting (by Rob Dillard), an abrupt change in the coloration of that moon, or a minimal sound cue (by Chris Lane), years pass (or revert).
Credit: Casey Ford Photography
Credit: Casey Ford Photography
At one early point, Erica’s father has died, and then later, he’s still alive. In one breath, the women argue about which of them is on “co-parenting” duty to tend their infant daughters (from Vicky’s previous relationship), and in the next, they’re planning one of the girls’ wedding. The fractured, frenetic pace of the play takes some getting used to, and it initially looks like Foulger’s actresses might be simply playing quirky traits, as opposed to dimensional characters.
But as “Bright Half Life” progresses through all of its fantastical fits and starts and instant replays, inexplicably enough, we do come to accept and understand them as real people, even without the luxury of a lot of the conventional drawn-out scenes or effusive dialogue that drive most scripts. (Still, on a couple of different occasions in the show, Krausen and McLellan are utterly believable talking over one another in particularly excited exchanges.)
The more tentative McLellan often seems somewhat miscast and out of her depth here — then again, who wouldn’t, opposite a talent of Krausen’s caliber? Except for a dramatic supporting turn as a sympathetic school counselor in “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,” she’s probably best known for several lesser parts in musicals (“In the Heights,” “Head Over Heels,” “Oliver!”). Nonetheless, McLellan definitely stands her ground admirably, in what amounts to the finest hour (and a half) of her Atlanta theater career to date.
Credit: Casey Ford Photography
Credit: Casey Ford Photography
As for Krausen, her radiant work is something of a revelatory change of pace, too, in the sense that she’s portraying a relatively rare contemporary role. Her resume includes appearing in countless classics with the former Georgia Shakespeare over the years, as well as delivering highly memorable performances in such other period pieces as “The Revolutionists,” “On the Verge” and “Dangerous Liaisons” (also directed by Foulger). She invests Erica with a relaxed confidence and resolute charm that feels simultaneously down to earth and lost in the stars.
In the Outfit’s “Bright Half Life,” all the various and recurring bits and pieces of the play ultimately add up in wholly remarkable and ingenious ways, and that truly bears repeating.
THEATER REVIEW
“Bright Half Life”
Through Feb. 27. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays; 2:30 p.m. Saturday (Feb. 12 only). $40-$45 ($15 for students). Balzer Theater at Herren’s, 84 Luckie St. NW, Atlanta. 678-528-1800, www.theatricaloutfit.org.
Bottom line: Park Krausen’s stellar performance radiates.
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