BOX CLEVER (Inis Nua): 60-second review

Box Clever review image
Ruby Wolf and Rachel Brodeur star in BOX CLEVER. Photo: Plate 3 Photography.

With BOX CLEVER, Inis Nua has done the impossible: make bureaucracy theatrical. Most of that credit is due to the two-women cast of Ruby Wolf who portrays the protagonist, Marnie, and Rachel Brodeur who brings exquisite detail to the myriad of characters she brings to life. Wolf engages audiences with her fast-paced active narration that pulls us through the script. Brodeur uses the smallest shift in her smile and a change in her realistic (possibly too realistic) brogue to bring to life everyone from a four-year-old girl to a lowlife.

Monsay Whitney’s play examines life after domestic abuse and how the effects are long-lasting even after the perpetrator is long gone. For an almost two-hour show with no intermission It felt fast paced and intimate. Andrew Cowles’s lighting simplistically transforms the tiny playing space into multiple nuanced locations. Meghan Jones’s set of Snakes and Ladders lays a heavy-handed symbolism to underscore the odyssey Marnie undertakes to find safe housing for herself and her daughter.

Louis Bluver Theatre at The Drake 302 South Hicks Street] February 8-24, 2019; inisnuatheatre.org

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