By Max Gelber
With “Little Red Hen,” the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and the Useless Theatre Company, presented a well-executed and charming take on the familiar prospect of utopia gone awry. The new play, written by Jon Myers and directed by Jennifer MacMurdo, debuted Friday night.
“Little Red Hen” tells the story of the Little Red Hen, a wide-eyed, energetic, naive yet ever optimistic chicken, played by actress Molly Kimmerling. The Little Red Hen has just invented the blueprints for a machine that equally divides the feed for all the chickens of the coop. Yet, once Wooster Rooster, the head of the coop, played by Michael Haddad, decides to oversee the production of the machine, things begin to go terribly wrong. Rooster forces the coop to align either with him and the “right wing” or the now ostracized Little Red Hen and the “left wing.”
It’s no surprise if the storyline sounds eerily familiar. Myers admitted at a post-show panel discussion that he was influenced by George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm.”
“I just thought it would be fun [to use chickens],” Myers said, when asked why he chose fowl for the cast.
Clocking in at a little longer than an hour, the play advances quickly, easing its way from a light comedic nature into the darker, more bleak pace that sets the tone for the rest of the story. While it lags at a few points near the end, it holds the viewer’s attention enough to make it less of an issue.
What separates “Little Red Hen” from the rest of the “dystopian” genre is its earnest attempt to leave the audience with a sense of ambiguity. Whether it is the picture-perfect feel-good ending or the “all hope is lost” woeful climax, Myers doesn’t seem concerned with giving audience members a complete end result wrapped up in a nice little package. Rather, he offers enough of a foundation – a blueprint – of an end result to be interpreted.
Myers originally penned the play in spring 2004 for a cast of four actors at the Journeys Program of Southern Illinois University. In summer 2004, the play was developed at the Kennedy Center playwriting intensive. Once Myers decided to add a four actor chorus, the draft was once again drastically revised for a another workshop and stage reading by the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s Shadowboxing Theatre Workshop during summer 2006. The play was sent through the workshop process during a spring 2007 Skills Lab as a part of Boston University’s first class in the MFA Playwriting program.
The play continues its run with showings Jan. 31 through Feb. 3. Tickets can be purchased online, at bu.edu/bpt, or by calling the box office at (866) 811-4111.
