Review in Brief: ‘RAFT’ at Tennessee Stage Company’s New Play Festival

Horror film screenwriters love images of evil clowns and bank robbers in Halloween masks for the perverse contradictory emotions they present. Indeed, there truly is something universally unsettling about children’s toys snatched from their innocent environment and forced into the harsh reality of a dangerous world.

In the case of RAFT, a new play by Carolyn Thomas and Harrison Young currently being performed as part of Tennessee Stage Company’s New Play Festival, the perversely unsettling contradiction is a kid’s bouncy castle at a beach birthday party being swept out to sea, with two stranded, 30-something friends onboard. The playwrights have used the logical absurdity of the pair’s dilemma as a springboard for the two to examine the depth of their long friendship and reveal secret desires and ambitions.

The stranded pair are Morgan Vargas (H. Caitlin Corbitt) and Heath Hodge (Nathan McGhee), known by his nickname “Hedgehog.” Like the bouncy castle undulating on the waves, the playwrights have made the pair’s sexuality and sexual preferences ambiguous, forcing the audience to make assumptions and then, possibly, re-evaluate them. Noticeably, “Morgan” is both a male and female name, and theoretically, the role could be played by either a male or female actor. So, while the audience is tugged to and fro with these sorts of questions, the characters similarly tug at each other with details of their relationships and quibble over personality flaws as they struggle with survival.

Ultimately, RAFT’s character evolution drifts at sea a bit too long, dipping below the waves with a few of its plot twists. In this production, the bouncy castle is simulated by colorful mats surrounded by blue fabric as ocean. As an added plot device, a hole in the castle threatens deflation, requiring either Morgan or Hedgehog to have a finger in it at all times preventing disaster. Also, the assumed movement of the ocean means the actors can rarely stand, instead having to sit, squat, kneel, or recline completely. [Tip for potential RAFT audience members: get a seat in the front row if you want to catch everything.]

RAFT can be admired on a number of levels, most assuredly as a tremendously demanding and revealing vehicle for two actors. In this production, both Corbitt and McGhee constructed believable, colorful personalities, mastered the play’s unusual movement limitations, and delivered crisp timing and snarky subtleties throughout the humorous conversational banter.

RAFT has six more performances at Broadway Academy of Performing Arts, 706 N. Broadway. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM; Sunday at 2:00 PM through February 23. Tickets are available at http://tennesseestage.com/ for $15.