“Brilliant Traces” is exactly what I hope for when I go to a fringe theatre production. An intriguing and imaginatively well-written 1989 script by Cindy Lou Johnson is given a committed, fully-realized performance, smartly directed and tightly paced to entice and entertain, and to gradually bring us to a better understanding of individuals whose intimate encounter reveals both their individual characters and their mysteries. Director Randy Dixon has done an excellent job of shaping the performance while never allowing his directorial hand to intrude on the world of the play.
One night during a blizzard in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, there is a knock on the door that awakens the cabin’s solitary inhabitant, a self-isolating man named Henry Harry. A woman, Rosannah, stumbles into the room in her wedding dress, semi-incoherently explaining that her car has failed, and she then falls to the floor, to be carried by Henry to a cot where she will sleep for the next two days. When she finally wakes again Henry feeds her, gives her some clothes and tries to uncover an explanation of how and why she has driven 3,000 miles to escape from her wedding to this refuge at the end of the world, and why Henry has ended up here, as well. These two people are like remote, self-contained planets that have inexplicably moved into each other’s orbit.
The language of the script is highly stylized and creates a delicate balance, an almost cryptic, closely guarded sharing of things each of these individuals know only unto themselves and things that they can only discover in each other. Of course, in order for that to work the performers have to make this ephemeral flow of words feel authentic and, at least within the world of this play, realistic, and that is one of the key achievements of these two actors. They bring a spontaneity to the text that makes it feel like it’s being created on the spot. Lisa Keeton brings a simultaneous intensity and internalization to Rosannah that insists that we pay attention to her at the same time that she never quite believes in her own reality. Michael Bils gives his performance of Henry exactly the right proportion for a man of action whose primary action is his decision to remove himself from connection with anyone else in the world. In every gesture he makes toward Rosannah we see the conflict between his desire to engage and his fear of what damage his engagement might do.
These are profoundly injured people, people marked by “brilliant traces,” the scars of their previous lives and relationships. Once they are connected in this cabin, in the warmth of this room, sheltered from the killing-cold outside it, their emotional imperative drives them to the self-revelation that is the play’s ultimate purpose. Fortunately, both of these actors have a great connection with each other and excellent internal focus. They make it inevitable that these two people come together because, in this world, neither could do otherwise.
“Brilliant Traces” is a tight, intriguing, entertaining and artistically rewarding play. This show deserves to be seen by a good-sized audience and anyone interested in excellent playwriting, solid acting and honest production will be well rewarded
