Review: CBT’s ‘Failure: A Love Story’ — Whimsical and Wise

 

Equal parts existentialism and comically whimsical narrative, Philip Dawkins’ Failure: A Love Story, which opened last week in the Clarence Brown Theatre’s Lab Theatre, is a feast of storytelling that barely hides its comically abstract premise within a delicious presentation of life, death, love, and dealing with failure. Not only has director Casey Sams guided a superb cast of UT Theatre undergraduate actors through a work that requires storytelling through narration rather than dialogue, but has also used her own vivid directorial imagination to make the production visually rich, captivating, and deliciously paced for the audience through its 100 minute performance.

Right from the start, something akin to a Greek Chorus explodes with expository details comprising the basic focus of the story. Set in Chicago in the early years of the 20th Century, Failure begins with Henry and Marietta Fail immigrating to America and opening a clock repair shop near the Chicago River at the intersection of Lumber and Love. The Fails have three daughters—Nelly, Jenny June, and Gerty—but fall victim to circumstances while out for a pleasure drive in their new Stutz Bearcat; they are killed in the real-life, but freakish 1915 Eastland Riverboat disaster. 

As we pick up the story some 13 years later, we see the life, loves, and attractions of the three sisters: the clock-obsessed Gerty (McKenzie Jordan), the swimming-obsessed Jenny June (Juliana Maestri), and the life-obsessed Nelly (Mia Eller). In addition to the sisters, a baby brother to the sisters is born dead, but that fact is somehow balanced with the finding of a baby in a basket floating in the Chicago River. The Fails adopt that boy and he grows into the somewhat strange, but gentle and animal-obsessed brother, John N. (J.D. Joiner). 

In addition to these named-characters, a marvelous chorus of three (Samuel Choi, Nevaeh Daniel, and Hogan Wayland) contribute a good bit of the atmosphere and pace to the narration as well as taking on familiar period songs for the sake of that atmosphere— managed here without pretentiousness. And, there are delightfully minimal puppets designed by Michaela Lochen, that take on the life (and death) of the Fail family symbols and pets—a snarky cuckoo clock, a parrot, and John N.’s pet python, as well as an obligatory grandfather clock. 

Although it would be a spoiler to mention in most every other play, we are told quite deliberately and circumstantially that the three sisters face impending, if not ironic, death within a year: Nelly by blunt object, Jenny June by disappearance, and Gerty by consumption—in that order. But before that can happen, the wealthy Mortimer Mortimer (Samuel R. McRary) shows up in their lives, smitten and loving each one, Nelly, Jenny June, and Gerty—in that order.

The set by Leilane Bertunes with its Roman numeral clockface theme and accumulation of tchotchkes toys with Deco design and supports the energy of the cast and the essence of the characters, lending a delightful visual metaphor or two to that support. Against that backdrop, emotional punctuations in warmth and coolness come from Miguel Santiago’s lighting. Matthew Carl’s costumes nail the 1920s period and pretty closely describe the wearer symbolically. Chance Beck contributed the descriptive sound effects that immerse the audience in the particular milieu.

Although there is one moment in which Sams and company could have had an intermission, such an insertion would probably have lessened the building dramatic tension and impact of this genuinely unique piece of theatre. Admittedly, the audience is pushed and pulled along its timeline, unsure what to make of its balancing act between happiness and sadness, between life and death. Ultimately, its concluding message—“Just because something ends, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great success”—says it all.