Playwright: Bekah Brunstetter. At: Prologue Theatre Company at Luna Central (fka Live Bait),
3914 N. Clark St. Tickets: 773-769-7761; www.brownpapertickets.org; $16-$20. Runs through: June 2
We know right away that the cheerful young man playing the dobro guitar under the big tree by the railroad tracks is a ghosthe says so, himself ("What are you looking at?" he teases us, "You can't see me!")and that noncorporeal creatures are exempt from the temporal limitations imposed on mere mortals. What we don't know yet is that his cognitive powers span only three generations in a chronicle dating back twice that numberimmortality being no guarantee of omniscienceso that sometimes even he is unable to distinguish between the living and the dead.
Our story technically begins in the years before emancipation, with a slave-woman who bought her freedom, only to die when the train carrying her north derailed. As is often the case in these instances, the site of the wreckage became a trysting place for local youth seeking privacy and a glimpse of the long-deceased signalman's warning lantern, said to appear to certain individuals. It is to this shrine that James and Mattie retreat in the summer of 1957 to share a clandestine courtship. James, you see, is heir to the tobacco fortune supporting the region's economy, Mattie is a secretary in the family businessand she's Black.
If you think you've already guessed how this will turn out, you're only halfway there. How can a person be hit by a train on a route abandoned for decades? Who is the smart New York visitor in town for her grandmother's funeral, wearing her late gram's dress? Why does our spectral host suddenly find himself sharing narrative duties with his former sweetheart? "This is just a legend," he cautions. "Maybe I'm romanticizing a bit to keep you interested."
Romanticizing or not, Bekah Brunstetter knows how to grab our attention and hold it spellbound for the 70 minutes it takes for her characters (and us) towell, see the light. The intimacy of the small room places audiences barely eavesdropping distance from the confidences exchanged in a play demanding close attention to every word. Under Margo Gray's direction, LaNisa Renee Frederick and John Wehrman trip daintily through their mosaic text, while Beth Laske-Miller and Barbara Trinh's period accouterments keep us anchored in the present, however slippery its boundaries, and Luna Central's location across the street from the picturesque Wunder cemetery provides continuation of the magic far into the night.