Exit, Pursued by a Bear

"You go from zero to bear in one night? Come on!" says a man duct-taped to his living room chair in the mountains of North Georgia.

From the trophies that cover his wall it's clear that he's done a lot of hunting, but now that his wife is covering him in raw meat and honey, it looks like the hunter will be the hunted.

"Exit, Pursued by a Bear" is the famous stage direction from Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale." It is also the name of Lauren Gunderson play, running at the Charlestown Working Theatre and produced by Theatre on Fire.

"It's no mean feat to pull off a comedy about spousal abuse," says Artistic Director Darren Evans. "It's smart writing that fits our 'Not cute and not boring' aesthetic perfectly."

Even though the action of this play takes place entirely in one room, where the threat of a bear always looms, Gunderson uses the play within a play device to fill us in on the backstory. Kyle (Tim Hoover) can't figure out why his wife, Nan (Mary-Liz Murray), would do this to him, so Nan plays out the story out for her husband using her new peppy actress/stripper friend, Sweetheart (Samantha Evans), and her sassy best friend, Simon (Cameron Beaty Gosselin).

As Nan plays out the drama that is her life, the question that propels the action forward is: Will she go through with feeding her husband to a bear? Murray plays a woman who is strong enough to make us think she could get herself into this situation, but compassionate enough to make us believe she can be talked out of it.

Gosselin as Cameron, the man who has been Nan's gay best friend since middle school, is spot on with his queer Southern manners, wit, and sophistication. If you crammed Paul Lynde and Leslie Jordan together and put pom-poms in his hands, you'd have the Simon that Gosselin creates. He's the kind of gay man that has carefully crafted a parody of himself to mask both his strength and his vulnerability.

The minute we hear a Southern accent, most of us give up that hope of seeing a fully developed character onstage. And we expect even less when we know that the accent is coming out of an actress/stripper. But Samantha Evans makes us question our stereotypes by giving us a Sweetheart that is a simple human being and not a simply draw caricature. And after, all it's Sweetheart's copy of Shakespeare helps Nan plan a "slow and theatrical" revenge on Kyle.

But this play would simply not work without that man strapped to the chair. This man has to do most of his acting with his mouth duct-taped shut. Kyle need to be an abusive and clueless narcissist, so that we'll want to sympathize Nan and encourage her even deeper into this mess in which she's got herself.

But we've also got to believe that Nan could love this man, and that he's somehow capable of change. Hoover's a very convincing dumbass; he also has a few vicious undertones that make us fear his violence. But most importantly, this actor has that magic ability to charm the pants off of Nan I'm certain that even the most cynical audience will at least feel a spark of something for him.

Once again Darren Evans and Theatre on Fire have given the audience a play that's both entertaining and will send them home talking.

It's clear why this show has been compared to the Cohen brothers, "Hamlet" and "I Love Lucy"; "Exit, Pursued by a Bear" is a fast-paced, Southern gothic, revenge comedy that, and like "The Winter's Tale," starts out with tragedy and abuse and end with a song and a dance like a romantic comedy.

"Exit, Pursued by a Bear"
Through Oct. 26 at the
Charlestown Working Theater
442 Bunker Hill Street
Box Office: www.charlestownworkingtheater.org or www.theatreonfire.org or 866-811-4111