The one-act drama Ashes to Ashes, produced by Twilight Productions at Theatre on the Square, is among the diverse theatre productions at the Indianapolis Fringe Festival in Indianapolis, Indiana, now in its sixth year.
Ashes to Ashes Synopsis
A grown man (and cosmetic surgeon) returns home to the lake house where his mother committed suicide a year earlier to meet with his retired-trucker and Deadhead father to finally help spread her ashes. This emotional upheaval is interrupted by the discovery that his father is engaged in a romance with a woman at least twenty years his junior, leaving the son and father – whose relationship is already strained – to try and make sense of how this affects their interaction from here on out.
I saw Amy Pettinella's last Fringe offering in 2009, Nevermore and wasn't very impressed. This probably sprang from the fact that it was a show about Poe and I'm a bit of a Picky Poe Nerd. Still, I decided to give Ashes to Ashes a chance and I'm very glad I did.
Moving Beyond Cliche
On the surface, it's a show about two very different people trying to find common ground – an often used, if not overused, concept, to be sure – but it goes beyond that. It serves as a relatively strong exploration of the absent-father, family-left-behind dynamic.
Due to the premise, the show has great potential to become a long, angst-filled slog, and yet, it doesn't do that. The strength of its script lies in those moments of interaction between the father and son characters when they're just sitting around, talking to each other casually, like two old friends who've fallen out of touch and are trying to get the feel of talking to each other again – walking on eggshells as they attempt to find and settle back into the old groove they used to have.
The script is by turns light and heavy, going from delightful dialogue to seriousness and back again very quickly. If it has any weak points at all, it's when the audience is forcefully reminded of how serious the story's plot is. The play loses quite a bit of steam whenever the solemnity of the occasion at hand creeps in around the edges, but thankfully the self-seriousness is quickly done away with through breezy, fun dialogue that keeps the play from becoming too melodramatic.
Also very impressive are the two lead actors, particularly the one portraying the father. This Deadhead ex-trucker character who could easily become nothing more than a caricature is a fully realized person rather than a parody of a stereotype. Even the 'younger woman' character – whose potential to become even more of a parody than the father is astounding – comes off as believable.
Final Verdict
While not perfect, Ashes to Ashes is a solid one-act play with great actors at its center and a fair amount of highly engaging dialogue. Three stars.
Lydia Ballard - A writer who got her start in the perilous world of fan fiction, Lydia Ballard is an aspiring comic book writer and self proclaimed lover ...
