Tension warmed the air last Saturday night in the Pocket Playhouse, as members of the University of Idaho Theatre Arts Department acted out the nightmare of waking from a coma.
Shoup Hall’s Pocket Playhouse was packed tight before the show began. All seats were taken, leaving more than half the audience sitting or standing on the scratchy carpet.
The heat of the room was enough for people to turn their play bills into fans.
Three people entered after the door closed. The audience was told to keep their heads on a swivel. The music cuts and silence takes over the Pocket Playhouse.
Hunter Diehl | ArgonautPlayhouse.
Dr. Hornby, played by UI instructor David Harlen, carries in Deborah, played by UI senior Whitney Holland. The two are followed by a young girl in a white dress, played by freshmen Teliha Kokuba.
The doctor places Deborah on a bed with the young girl resting her head at her feet. Both girls have their eyes closed, dead asleep. The doctor looks down at his patient, and the play begins.
From that point on, the audience is taken on a roller coaster ride of emotions since the play, taking the viewer through the mind of a 16-year-old girl who wakes up in the body of a 45-year-old woman.
Written in 1982 by playwright Harold Pinter, this one-act play focuses on Deborah and the moments right after she wakes from a 29-year coma. It explores the grand, illusion-filled experience that is reality and asks the audience to think deeper.
This spectacle was made more visceral due to the location. In the Pocket Playhouse, there is no barrier between the artists and the audience.
Using every inch of space they could, the actors would fall, crawl and weep at the feet of the attendees. This up-close style lent well to the play, making the production that more impactful.
The production was brought to UI under the direction of student Ricky Kimball, whose nine years of experience can be seen in this play.
“A Kind of Alaska” was intense experience from the get-go. Each actor played their part to their full potential, bringing out emotions rarely seen on an average day.
Dr. Horby’s frustration with Deborah was apparent from Harlan’s tight set shoulders and many sighs. However, just as apparent was his deep affection for her, as seen by his gentler body language.
The young girl in the white dress adds emotion in a different way.
With hardly any lines, Kokuba relayed her thoughts and feeling with movement.
For reasons that won’t be told here, Kokuba had to match every gesture and movement that Deborah made in her bed. This was made even more interesting by the fact that Kokuba was blindfolded for most of her performance. When Deborah’s hand shook with fear and confusion, so did the girl’s.
Holland’s splintered and jerky performance centers the play on the great terror and grief Deborah felt returning to reality.
Her performance is the meat of the play; seeing a teenage girl wake up in the body of a grown woman. She expresses the experience with manic tangents about her childhood loves, shuddering sobs of realization, and much to the relief of the audience, some clever quips that released the tension with chuckles.
The cast and play are rounded out by junior Kymber Dodd, who plays Deborah’s sister Pauline.
Like Deborah, Pauline has aged 29 years. Dodd pulls off both frustration and love while expressing her character’s feelings about her sister.
When she tells Deborah about the day she fell into her deep slumber, the pain can not only be heard in Dodd’s voice, it’s felt, too.
Ultimately, this is a play that reaches you on a deep level. The fears of aging and time passing by is an old one, and it has plagued every culture since the beginning of time.
However, most of us have the pleasure of experiencing those changes at a nice, leisurely pace where we can take in the sites. Seeing someone deprived of that opportunity to live — fictional or not — is an engrossing experience worth 45 minutes of your time.
Hunter Diehl can be reached at [email protected]