Rebecca Brown has written a play.  But you already know that.  If you’re reading this, I hope it means you’re already planning on going, for it’s a beautiful and moving play, and you deserve to see it.  But it is helpful to keep in mind that this is a first play written by a writer who, I am lead to believe, is accustomed to writing novels.  For me, this is one of the aspects of this production that makes it feel right for OtB, a company that I count on to show me challenging and utterly contemporary art, to be presenting this work.  The other reason that The Toaster fits my OtB mold is that it is unflinchingly about death – the most certain fact of life that our American culture seems so unwilling to accept.  It was a bracing, and for many teary fellow audience members, including my wife, powerfully emotional exhibition of that ultimate passage and the chaotic opportunity it affords those of us left at the dock – those of us calling bon voyage and other, deeper hopes for communication with our loved ones that we wish had not come so late.

Do remember it was written by a novelist, though.  At least that fact helped me adjust to the odd feeling of being presented with a very familiar, typical set of familial relationships between mother, son/brother, daughter/sister while being bombarded with an unnatural volume of words.  The very talented and imminently watchable trio of performers behave in ways that anyone with a mother and at least one sibling will have no trouble empathizing with, but the number of words used to elucidate the specifics of their situation begs the question of whether elucidation is the goal at all.  In fact it is, ultimately; but The Toaster is a piece that addresses head-on states of being and non-being not commonly spoken about so baldly in public, and in order to do so articulately and effectively, many words are needed.

Truthfully, the words are so finely selected and delivered that the first act seemed like poetry, not least thanks to the graceful portrayal by Susan Corzatte of the mother in her final moments.  Her character spoke the least and was the surest about where she was coming from, the most at peace with who she was, and the most comfortable with where she was going.  Mary Eweld’s daughter character was at the other end of the spectrum, talking almost non-stop, throwing out the words like bricks in order to keep a wall up, keep from facing the reality of her impending loss.  Tim Hyland’s son tries with all his might to stay grounded, though he acknowledges that he doesn’t do it very well or even know why half the time.  There’s some good shtick between these last two – thankfully pain only hurts when you’re on the inside – when you’re watching from the audience it can be laugh out loud funny.

In act two, once these two offspring have lost their matriarch to the ever after, the poetry vanishes into the prose, and the grieving siblings are awash in a flood of language, attempting to find any sensible reason to keep moving forward in this world.  Though there is a death, the play is not a tragedy, more of a cautionary tale.  I did see a glimmer of hope for the surviving pair, enlightened for a moment by the wisdom left them by their mother.  Whether they, or we, will go forward from the confines of the play having taken full advantage of the wisdom of our ancestors, able to build confidently upon the foundations of the past, or whether the constant stream of premasticated pablum in our world will ultimately extinguish that glimmer – the balance of this question remains to be seen.  It is clear that they, as we, must continue to work to earn whatever bright warmth we can from one another in this world.  Brown does give us one hint that sometimes a rusty old work horse can still satisfy more than the gleaming new widgets constantly rolling off the line.  And the surest way to receive that glowing, rewarding feeling from life, as any good mother will tell you, is to give of yourself fully and honestly, without any expectation of return.

Okay, so that’s a nice, hokey wrap up, but it’s there in The Toaster.  Sometimes there’s nothing nicer than a freshly sliced, toasted and buttered piece of toast.  Entertainingly, in the play there’s also some good clowning of the type that would be at home in a Sam Beckett play, wonderful expositions on the way memory acts upon us, and a breath-taking, wordless shared-moments-before-death passage between Corzatte and Hyland.  But enough reading about the live performance, go out and see it already!