In seven days, there will be a meltdown. The electricity grid will be gone. People will leave their homes in the cities and suburbs to flee for shelter in the forests.
In small groups, these refugees will gather around campfires to quiz each other about the folks they’ve met in their travels to determine if family and friends escaped alive or not. The survivors will share food, water, batteries and loss.
Despite that, they will find companionship and comfort in remembering and retelling one epic episode of “The Simpsons.”
This is how Anne Washburn’s three-act play, “Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play,” being performed at the Stonington Opera House through Sunday, begins. It ends 75 years later with a re-enactment of that episode, titled “Cape Feare,” as an intricate religious ceremony replete with song.
Opera House Arts isn’t letting its audience off easy this season. “Mr. Burns” is challenging stuff as were its productions of “Orlando,” “An Iliad” and “Julius Caesar.” While Washburn’s play is entertaining, it also demands that theatergoers think about how pop culture influences a society and how that society might deify one tiny element of it to survive. Even without electricity, it’s a brain-frier of a show.
“Mr. Burns” was first performed in 2012 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. Later that year, it moved to Playwrights Horizons in New York City. Opera House Arts is mounting the play’s first production in Maine.
Directors Sarah Gazdowicz and Meg Taintor, the organization’s producing artistic director, create a strong ensemble that allows every actor a moment in the spotlight. They also perfectly pace the show so that by the time the dazzling third act rolls around, theatergoers are ready to see the cast of “The Simpsons” alive and on stage.
The acting troupe that includes Matt Hurley, Meredith Gosselin, Melody Bates, Jason Martin, Margaret Ann Brady, Bari Robinson and Zillah Glory is tight and the performances so equally good that it is difficult to say one outshines another. But Martin and Bates redeem themselves in “Mr. Burns” after lackluster performances in “Julius Caesar.”
Martin is mesmerizingly menacing in the third act as Bart Simpson’s nemesis Sideshow Bob and as Mr. Burns. Bates’ Lisa Simpson is as kind and smart as her cartoon counterpart.
Glory’s Bart is a charming reluctant hero with a much bigger heart than the Simpson’s creator Matt Groening ever gave him. There is hope for a post-electric world if this boy is around to worship.
The design team for “Mr. Burns” goes over the top but in a good way. Kat Nakaji’s set, Ben LIeberson’s lighting and Erica Desautels’ costumes create an eye-popping third act that is as dazzling and as dizzying as the dialogue.
“Mr. Burns” is a triumph for Taintor and her company. It is the first season she has programed at the helm of Opera House Arts. The producing artistic director set out “to examine human beings in states of crisis,” she wrote in the program notes for “Mr. Burns.”
“In the end, [Mr. Burns] is a deeply complex piece of theatre that explores how we survive, how we adapt, and how we create anew from the ashes,” Taintor wrote.
She got that right, but like “An Iliad,” “Mr. Burns” also is about the power storytelling has over human beings and the heart’s longing for a hero, even if that hero is just a cartoon boy.
“Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play” runs through Sunday, Sept. 4, at the Stonington Opera House. For information, call 367-2788 or visit operathousearts.org.