Play Review: "Prospect Hill"

If you find yourself around the Mass Ave, area in Indianapolis this coming weekend and you hear the sounds of a hammer smashing into a liquor cabinet, the bounce of an oversized yoga ball or cloying discussion of Joseph Campbell’s 6 part PBS documentary, they are most likely coming from the nearby Basille theater as it will be the second week’s run of local playwright Bruce Walsh’s play Prospect Hill, put on by Fat Turtle Theatre and directed by Aaron Cleveland . Utilizing only three characters and one setting the audience will be taken on a wild journey through addiction, guilt and the precarious balance between faith and desire and overcoming the worst aspects of ourselves. The show opens with Jacob Stichter, played with a frayed intensity by local actor Zachariah Stonerock, sitting in his apartment while his boyfriend, Rex Isaak, played by Craig Kemp, is busy trying to renovate the house, the drill he holds being a shifting motif in the play, a tool for both change and destruction. Jacob is a therapist but a very successful one we sense, and it would not surprise us if Ethan, a troubled Pepsi employee played with skittish aplomb by Evren Wilder Elliot, is his only patient. Throughout the course of the play, events such as Jacob’s pleas for his father’s acceptance through Skype calls, Ethan’s false promise for a better future and Rex’s confidant but scatterbrained advice bounces off the three characters in a series of escalating emotional intensity that feel raw and authentic. Stonerock is a joy to watch in his quest for the courage to change his disappointing life, as is Elliot, who acts as his mirror image of Jacob as a person who is smart enough to talk themselves out of recognizing their own shortcomings. The only real loose piece of this puzzle is Rex’s character. Kemp is having fun with it, whether he is (accidently) dropping his power drill or challenging someone to an arm-wrestling contest, and in doing so, the audience has fun to, with his scenes getting the most laughs in this drama. But on closer inspection, his character is not really well-defined within the plot. For instance, it was really hard for me to figure out who he was until his relationship with Jacob is brought up most of the way through the first act. Maybe it was the uniform he wear while drilling holes in the wall, or my recent Hulu subscription, but I was getting Janitor from Scrubs vibes from him early on, thinking he might be a total figment of Jacob’s imagination. This is really a criticism of the writing and not of acting, as the play came alive during his scenes, as did the audience I saw it with, and provides a bit of levity to contend with the play’s more somber moments. By the end, the problems of three may not be solved, but the complexities of their lives and the possible ways they can fix it are laid bare, with the help of a clever script, Cleveland’s pared-down direction and a trio of delightful performances.  

Rating: 4/5