Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

Theater Review (NYC) American Treasure by Julia Jarcho

Posted on | December 7, 2009 | No Comments

13P Started as a collective of mid-level playwrights (e.g. regional and off-Broadway level) who were unsatisfied with the workshop process. It’s interesting to watch that mission apply to American Treasure, which feels like a good play that would have been great with more workshopping. American Treasure is one of the few plays I’ve seen that manages to recover from an exceeding weak opening, which plays up the noir speak to a preposterously high level. This kind of over-stylized dialogue dies down as the plot takes over, but the dialogue does set you off from the plot from the start.

The play also suffers from a weak pair of actors who look lost and poorly disciplined. Playwright Julia Jarcho also directed the show, and the play could certainly have benefitted from an outside source to tighten up the play’s pacing and loose ends.

Nonetheless, there’s a lot of intelligence abound in American Treasure. The play takes traditional liberal tropes of overwhelming power structures and applies them at a local historical level. In American Treasure‘s vision, the power that controls your town is no different from the one that controls the national myth, which, as Jarcho astutely notes, was based on genocide. For a genre so dominated by Indiana Jones in American pop culture, Jarcho doesn’t gloss over anything.

What could change about the play is a more refined sense of humor, as most of the plays comedy produces nothing more than mild chuckles. The atmospheric effects are great, and most playwrights would dream for this kind of technical design for a small scale show. A few of the playwrights in the 13P collective have already had greater successes since it was formed; Sarah Ruhl already has a Pulitzer nomination and a Broadway show under her belt. Jarcho, featured in the New York Times as a teenager, still has a lot of room to grow as a playwright, but she certainly has a precocious thematic flair. Modifying her knack for dialogue, and letting some of the collaborative processes into her work will only make her work better with maturity. 13P has allowed Jarcho to dictate her vision more than most playwrights, ignoring the fact that playwrights are dictators of their work like few other genres of writers.

Photo by Rob Strong.

Presented by 13P at the Paradise Factory, 64 E. Fourth St., NYC. Nov. 29–Dec. 12. Wed., Thu., Sat., and Sun., 8:30 p.m.; Sat., 7:30 and 10 p.m. Tickets:(212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, www.theatermania.com, or www.americantreasuretheplay.com.

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