The continuing vitality of Albuquerque theater is a kind of marvel. The economy is tanking. More people are moving out than moving in. Unemployment is again rising toward 8 percent in a double-dip recession. Nearly every creative effort—including classical music, art galleries, book stores, magazines, newspapers, book publishing and writing— is in a world of hurt.
We still support, however, nearly 50 theatrical companies staging an extraordinary variety of classical and contemporary, edgy and conventional shows every weekend, year round, in and out of tourist seasons. I am not normally a local booster, but in this regard I am.
To perceive just how remarkable the Albuquerque scene is just look around you. Santa Fe, celebrated for the visual arts, has almost no theatrical presence. Much larger regional metro areas like Denver, Phoenix and El Paso pale in comparison to Albuquerque.
That remarkable diversity was amply on parade last weekend when I saw two plays whose only commonality was that they amply rewarded the effort to see them. Both were skillfully performed, thought-provoking and entertaining.
One, Outside Mullingar, performed by the Fusion company at the Cell theater, is a romantic comedy set on an isolated Irish farm. The other, Nickel and Dimed, staged by the Adobe Theater, is an edgy, socially conscious docudrama about the suffering of the working poor.
The contrasts between the plays are not confined to subject matter. Outside Mullingar was written by John Patrick Shanley, a New York playwright who has copped just about every prestigious award available to an American playwright. The cast of Sherri Edelen, her husband Thomas Simpson, Robert Benedett and Nancy Jeris is something unprecedented in Albuquerque: highly experienced professionals from Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Their Irish brogues are faultless, as is their comic timing and their ability to capture Shalnely’s poetic rhythms. Dennis Gromelski, Fusion executive producer, told the ABQ Free Press it was the finest cast he’d seen in Albuquerque in 25 years. Director Jacqueline Reid, one of the principals of Fusion has had a hand as director or actor in dozens of plays. The set is beautifully designed. The comic timing is exquisite. The audience’s laughter rolls out in continuing waves. There may, in fact, be a bit too much laughter. Director and actors have overemphasized the comedy half of romantic comedy to the point that the audience guffawed even when tragedy was unfolding on the stage.
Nickel and Dimed, on the other hand is performed by mostly local volunteers on a bare stage. There are no sets and almost no props, and the six actors not only perform multiple roles but also double as stage hands. At one point, even the audience participates, being drafted to answer questions and help ram home the message that the lives of the working poor are made intolerable by the low pay and dehumanizing treatment they receive. The Adobe’s volunteers do a fine job. Colleen McClure, as the journalist disguised as a marginal-world worker, is on stage constantly and is the unifying and propulsive force in the play. She is ably supported by Carolyn Hogan, Margie Maes, Ruben Muller, Marina Sage and Linda Williams.
Nickel and Dimed began life as a Harper’s magazine article by Barbara Ehrenreich, who spent months working in three cities at menial, demeaning jobs—cleaning houses, waiting on tables and working the floor at “Mall Mart.” She wants to see how the other half lives, but she finds out that she can’t make ends meet no matter how hard she tries, even when holding two jobs simultaneously and using her savings to make a deposit on a trailer.
She expanded her article in 2001 into a best-selling book that attracted enormous attention at the time. Joan Holden adapted the book for the stage.
The play has, if anything, more relevance now than when it was first produced in 2006. The sinking of millions of formerly middle-class workers into the swamp of the working poor during the Great Recession has created a vigorous and partially successful effort to convert the $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage into a “living wage.” Already Albuquerque and Santa Fe have raised the minimum wage, and Las Cruces has put an increase on the November ballot. Some other states, notably Washington, are far ahead of New Mexico.
Outside Mullingar, by contrast, is about individual rather than social trauma. Two families live adjacent to each other but have quarreled for a generation about a 14-foot strip of land (a kind of petty feud all too familiar to anyone who has lived in rural or small town New Mexico). One family owns the land but it lies in front of the other family’s house. The feud reaches into a second generation, affecting the sub rosa romance of the son of one family and the daughter of the other. Like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the couple struggles to cross the divide created by the family feud, but unlike that classic tragedy, this is a comedy where the story ends happily.
Happy, too, are the audiences who attend such shows.
Outside Mullingar will be performed through Sept. 27. As the Fusion continues to spread its wings in a drive to become New Mexico’s only statewide theater company, there will be performances in Santa Fe and Las Cruces, as well as in Albuquerque at the Cell through Sept. 18 and at the KiMo Sept. 25. For information and tickets call 766-9412. The company’s website fusionabq.org has not been updated for the 2014-15 season as of this writing.
Nickel and Dimed continues through Oct. 5 at the Adobe Theater, 9813 Fourth St. NW in Albuquerque. For information and reservations call 898-9222 or go to adobetheater.org.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Barbara Hansen as the author of Nickel and Dimed. The author is Barbara Ehrenreich as appears in this corrected version. We regret the error.
(Photo of Albuquerque by Todd Shoemake)
Responses to “Comedy and tragedy on the Duke City stage”