Destination Duluth Theatre Review
Invisible Fences is repose from an emotional week
Great theatre doesn’t require flashy, expensive sets, a huge cast, or a big orchestra to fully captivate an audience.
Sometimes, all it takes is a couple of actors, a few instruments, and an enchanting little story to create magical stage wizardry.
Zeitgeist’s presentation of “Invisible Fences,” a funny, sweet, and sometimes tear-jerking musical fable, proved that idea to be definitively true at their Thursday night opening.
Created and performed by singer/songwriter Gaelynn Lea and storyteller/playwright Kevin Kling, the show was just what a battered and weary audience needed after a runaway roller coaster ride of an election season.
Lea and Kling share their steadfast advocacy for support of people with disabilities, both bringing personal life stories that make them acutely aware of living with a disability and finding their ways to very successful careers in the arts.
Lea was born with osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bones disease) and began using a wheelchair at age two. Kling was born with his left arm smaller than his right arm. About twenty years ago, he lost the use of his right arm in a serious motorcycle accident.
Lea plays the ingenious and wise-cracking Largroff who was born with “a spontaneous genetic mutation that caused her to sprout wings, horns, and a snout.” Kling’s character is a comic and witty Grasshopper, who sets the two off on a perilous journey to a far-off city so he can find his swarm and sing with them before he dies.
Pitfalls, dangers, and even sword fights with an evil prince of darkness ensue, as the plucky duo must work together to complete their quest. Lea and Kling play off each with an unmistakable joy and connection, taking on the story’s labyrinth of twists and turns that require the characters to work together with their own unique talents and quick wits.
The clever script is filled with puns, local references, and poignant lines, many of which seemed uncanny in their timeliness to the current political quagmire.
Music is also integral to the story. Lea’s violin playing was absolutely stunning, at turns upbeat and at others plaintive and heart-wrenching. She often sang along with her playing, with a voice and lyrics that were perfect to match her mythical character. Lea wrote the songs and lyrics, collaborating on a few with George Ellsworth and Alan Sparhawk.
Kling is precisely in his element, making the audience laugh and bringing out the pathos of his character, often at the same time. With his bright-green leprechaun outfit and antennae, his mythical “pot of gold” is really the wisdom, friendship, and simple things of life his character values.
The third character is narrator/guitar player, area musician George Ellsworth, whose storytelling provided an often funny deadpan take on the events, and was convincingly menacing as he played a few villains. Moving the story along chapter by chapter and playing his guitar, often to accompany Lea, made him integral to the success of the play.
Stunning projected digital artwork from Joel Sass and Tina Moore provided colorful back drops, and even simple animated moments at times, to make the story even more vivid. If a children’s book with this story, art, and themes is not already in the works, it should be.
Thematically, the play centers on the belief that both Lea and Kling espouse that “disability is diversity,” not something negative but something to be embraced and revered. The play demonstrates vividly that disability culture brings something unique and important to all forms of art.
The audience, in tears by show’s end, even joined in singing part of the show’s final song. The play shows the power of art to help soothe and bring peace, even in an environment of fear, anger, division, and ugliness.
Congratulations to Zeitgeist, the “Fences” cast, creative team, and director Tim White for their work to offer area audiences a wonderful piece of theater unlike any other show.
Now is an even more critical time to honor all the arts and those who bring them to us. Support your local theater and the variety of other organizations and artists who make their magic in a broken world. They are the healing “balm” we need.
Go see “Invisible Fences.” Bring the kids. Bring your friends and neighbors. Prepare to be enveloped in the show’s warmth, positivity, and hope.
Information on “Invisible Fences”
By Kevin Kling and Gaelynn Lea
Directed by Timothy White
Courtesy Zeitgeist Theatre
November 7-23 (Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 pm and
Sunday, November 19 ay 2 pm)
At Zeitgeist Teatro Zuccone
222 East Superior Street Duluth
For tickets go to agileticketing.net More information at zeitgeistarts.com
Every performance will have ASL interpretation (by Rebecca Rick) as well as projected captioning. There will also be narrated audio descriptions at the beginning of each scene to help blind and low-vision audience members better place themselves in the worlds created onstage.
Read a profile of Gaelynn Lea at destinationduluth.org
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About Sheryl Jensen - Arts & Entertainment Editor
A retired educator with the Duluth Public Schools, Sheryl Jensen has been a theater director of over 60 school and community productions. Her production of William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew at East High School won the National High School Theater award from the BRAVO television network.
Having written theater, music, dance, and opera reviews for the Duluth News Tribune for many years, she now is the Arts & Entertainment Editor for Destination Duluth.
