Almost Exactly Like Us
Review from the Minneapolis Star TribuneLink to original article
'Like Us' creates layers of alternative realities
Context is a vital element in this new play about characters who meet in different settings.
Lisa Brock, Special To The Star Tribune
If there is one constant in Alan M. Berks' new play, "Almost Exactly Like Us," it is that nothing is what it seems and no one is exactly who he says he is. It's an intriguing roller coaster that sets its audience up and knocks it down over and over again.
The play, being produced by Gremlin Theatre, opens on a public square in an unnamed Muslim country. Zoe (Emily Gunyou) is a young American expatriate eking out a living teaching English. Michael, a homesick American mathematics professor played by Peter Hansen, approaches and strikes up a conversation. The two quickly develop an intense relationship and just as quickly discover they know nothing about each other. Is Michael a visiting professor or an agent of the U.S. government? Is Zoe a carefree wanderer or a conspirator in a terrorist kidnapping plot?
The questions keep coming as Berks catapults these characters onto the campus of a small Christian college in the United States. Actions and gestures repeat themselves, though the changed context gives them dizzyingly different meanings.
Two other characters, played by Anthony Brown and Shannon Rusten, are equally slippery. Indeed, every time a character or situation seems graspable, it metamorphoses as Berks creates layers of alternative realities.
Gremlin Theatre's strong cast, under Matt Sciple's direction, is an important element in keeping all this clever mysteriousness from becoming purely tiresome. Gunyou brings a confident touch to the role of Zoe, revealing an almost adolescent vulnerability beneath a prickly exterior, while Hansen ably communicates the chaos that lurks just beneath the surface of Michael's urbane façade. Rusten gives a modulated and low-key performance in the less well-developed role of Michael's wife. Brown is a standout as Michael's brother-in-law, demonstrating a flexible range and nice sense of comic timing through the various incarnations of his role.
Berks' script occasionally wanders into awkwardly elevated monologues and portentous statements that even this able cast can't rescue, but he has a fine ear for dialogue and the nuances of seemingly commonplace exchanges. While he raises interesting questions about language, freedom and point-of-view with his changing perspectives, the relationships he forges among his four characters are what gives "Almost Exactly Like Us" its energy.
Lisa Brock is a Minneapolis writer.
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