“Clarkston” presented by Echo Theater Company

In my twenty-five years of theater reviewing, time and again when I find myself less enthusiastic about a show, ninety-nine percent of the time the culprit is the writing. One would think that there’d be a higher percentage allocated for miscasting or poor direction, but that simply hasn’t been my experience. So often what I see is an imbalance: a strong production of an uneven or unremarkable play, which is frustrating for a critic. I want to highlight how great the performances were, how amazing the production is, but that praise is overshadowed by the issues within the play itself. And thus we come to the west coast premiere of Samuel D. Hunter’s Clarkston by Echo Theater Company, which is beautifully acted. But as a piece of writing, the play seems thin and unconvincing.

In present-day Clarkston, Washington, Jake (Michael Sturgis) is starting his first night of a late-shift job at Costco. His co-worker, Chris (Sean Luc Rogers), is attempting to train him and quickly realizes that Jake isn’t the person he might have expected. The friendly if garrulous Jake volunteers that he’s a distant relative of William Clark (of Lewis & Clark fame), the man for whom Clarkston is named. He also shares that he has juvenile Huntington’s disease, and probably won’t live to thirty. Chris has a troubled relationship with his mother, Trisha (Tasha Ames), and hopes to get into a college writing program. As Jake and Chris get closer, the question becomes: can they overcome huge difficulties in their lives to be together and realize their dreams?

Sturgis is terrific as the intense and vulnerable Jake, outstanding both as the angry person that shouts “I’m funny and charming and urbane!” and also the sensitive friend who asks, “Is it okay if I don’t leave you?” Ames does a great job with a somewhat underwritten part (as it stands, the role is more of a plot point than a fully realized character) as the needy and manipulative Trisha, bringing subtlety and genuine emotion to her performance. Rogers is excellent as the friendly if guarded Chris, especially in a speech in which he vividly describes the value of money to Jake.

Director Chris Fields gets strong work from his cast, but I found a couple of stylistic choices to be ineffective. In between each scene, one of the characters pulls a piece of curtain to cover a cinderblock wall (until it’s fully covered by play’s end), and I’m not quite sure what that was meant to represent. I also found the repetitive use of a Stephen Stills song between each scene to be an odd choice. My main problem with Hunter’s writing was that I didn’t find the characters or situation credible or especially compelling. Jake alone feels like a ‘Mad Libs’ jumble of unlikely qualities: he’s in his twenties and is obsessed with Lewis and Clark, he can quote whole sections of Clark’s journal from memory (?!), he majored in “postcolonial gender studies” and then throw in a disease. I was hoping the play would have something to say about working late night at a Costco’s or other big box store, but that was really window dressing.

If you want to see some strong performances from a trio of superb actors, Clarkston is certainly worth your time. But as a play it doesn’t quite come together.

Clarkston is presented by Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theatre and plays through October 21. Tickets are available at www.EchoTheaterCompany.com