Theater Mu's peerless Stands On Its Own

The dark saga of teen girlhood continues on

Photo by Rich Ryan

What is it about teenaged girls that imbues our society with such a primal fear?

Photo by Rich Ryan

There is a rich heritage of horror narratives about girls around the age 16 mark. Sometimes they're heroes (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, natch), but more often they are complicated villains (here's looking at you Heathers and Mean Girls) or even veer towards to outright horrifying (think Stephen King's gruesome Carrie or the all-male Lord of the Flies).

Photo by Rich Ryan

The latest new work from Theater Mu (now showing at the Gremlin Theater in St. Paul through February 16) stands smack on the Carrie end of the spectrum. peerless details two sisters who are nearly identical in appearance and are well on their way towards achieving lofty ambitions despite their young age. When they are not accepted immediately into the prestigious Ivy league college that is the foundation of their future plans, the sisters panic and take drastic (and I mean DRASTIC) action to eliminate their competition, both among school peers and even a former boyfriend. They soliloquize plenty of soul crushing assumptions about race, class and gender along the way, and learn with the help of a clairvoyant classmate that even accurate predictions do not always result the way they seem they should and that no one can be trusted.

Photo by Rich Ryan

The small cast here often performs double duty, with exception of our leading sisters M and L. Francesca Dawis plays M and Isabella Dawis plays L. They are eerily similar in appearance, and once they got into a flow they seemed like an uneasy mirror of one another. Their yin and yang dynamic tugs the audience through an emotional upheaval, and the Dawis sisters have no fear in taking their characters' darkness all the way. Meredith Casey is convincingly unhinged as the oracle, aka Dirty Girl, whose sickening predictions set the whole wheel of disaster in motion. Kenyai O'Neal is sadly lovely as M's doomed boyfriend BF, and I wished we saw a bit more of his character throughout. Neal Beckman was the bright spot as the charmingly cursed D; his appearances were often the sole spot of humor in the show, an element peerless sorely needed.

Photo by Rich Ryan

The scenic design by Joe Stanley is multitasking and innovative, featuring revolving walls, benches that also serve as beds and TV consoles, and hidden lockers. I enjoyed watching the seemingly simple setting continue to expose new tricks, and it works really well to keep the action fast-paced. Karin Olson's lighting design and Kevin Springer's sound design are dramatic and lend the full creepy feeling to the show. I loved Khamphian Vang's vibrant, color-blocked costuming; it's very vibey and may even have been my favorite element of the whole play.

Photo by Rich Ryan

peerless is self-described as Macbeth for modern teenagers but exploring race issues, and I think that's about right. It's Lily Tung Crystal's first time directing since she was named Theater Mu's artistic director last year, and it's a striking debut. For myself: I have to be honest - peerless was not my flavor of the week. I've enjoyed many texts in this genre, but something about the Jiehae Park's script felt disconnected to me. There are several moments of shocking revelation, especially in the sisters' relations to people of other races. I understand why they were included the way they were and the point they were trying to make, but the resolution of the play to me felt too bare-boned for the complexity of the problems and assumptions named throughout the script. The issues peerless raises are deep and darkly internalized for a lot of us, with devastating consequences for their real-life victims; I really hoped for an honest confrontation about them to help the audience learn from the sisters' mistakes, rather than a simple slash and burn approach to justice (which felt like the easy way out).

That said, if the horror genre is your jam then you will probably find many elements of peerless to like and it seemed much of the audience found this funnier than I did - so why not check it out? peerless was a bold choice for Tung Crystal to open her leadership with, and I'm excited to see what she has next in store. For more information or to get tickets, click on this link.