Burying Shadows With In Tandem

In Tandem Theatre opens its season with the Wisconsin-premiere production of M.E.H. Lewis' exquisitely intricate drama Burying the Bones. The complexities of aggression, racism and civil war surface onstage in a production directed by In Tandem co-founder Chris Flieller. 

Malkia Stampley plays Mae-- a South African woman who is plagued by memories of her husband (played as a persistent haunting and in flashbacks by Di'Monte Henning.) Cassandra's sister (a former registered nurse played by Bria Cloyd) wants her to move beyond the past. Mark Corkins plays Gideon--the one man who seems to have some memory of what might have happened to Cassandra's husband. As he was a former policeman under the rule of apartheid, there's some question as to his reliability. He did, after all oversee the torture and murder of many, many people under apartheid. 

Civil war is every bit as awful as any other kind of war. Played out between the peoples of a single nation, however, it feels all the more vividly catastrophic because the horrors are so self-contained. Burying the Bones is a cleverly-crafted exploration of this. A woman. Her missing husband. His captor. Her sister. The horrors of war are played out on the small canvas of four lives. And thanks to the unique talents of In Tandem, these horrors are brought into a very intimate studio theatre space that  doesn't leave a whole lot of space for that comfortable distance you might find in a bigger production. We're all here for this and we're all a part of this and it's very ugly. 

The most familiar face here for me personally was Corkins'. He's done some really, really careful work picking up that specific South African accent and just as much work rendering a portrayal that is every bit as intricate and complex as the institutionalized violence that character is  part of. This is not an easy character to understand . . . he has a love for human life that is equaled to a love for authority and order. So he'll kill people to make sure they don't have a chance to kill people. And he's racist. But he has learned to respect the schoolteacher he has been interrogating. And he's learned things from this schoolteacher. But he still thinks of blacks as being lesser people. It's difficult enough trying to understand the weird convolutions in logic that make up the personality of a character like that. It must've been some kind of a breathtaking challenge to bring that to the stage, but Corkins does an excellent job of it. The portrayal feels very authentic. We're all seats of this kind of deeply conflicted paradox. Corkins' performance holds an interesting mirror up to that conflict.

Malkia Stampley is a central hero here. She's searching for the truth and she's going to find out what everyone finds out when they search for the truth. Dramatic depictions of the journey of the hero don't have a woman in the role of that hero nearly often enough. Stampley's performance makes a really powerful case for this. She goes through a tremendous amount of stress and inner turmoil to achieve the kind of resolution she does at the end of the play. And it would be very, very difficult not to identify with that on a very deep level. It's a very inspiring performance. 

Di'Monte Henning has a clever sense of humor about him in casual conversation as the memory of Mae's husband who is persistently haunting her. He's also given the challenge of portraying the man as he is being interrogated by Corkins' character. One of his  biggest challenges here is portraying a character being waterboarded. The torture has to look real enough to deliver the brutality of waterboarding in a studio theatre without being so traumatizing that it compromises his ability to perform for the rest of the play. The production strikes a pretty good balance. It was pretty convincing even from the front row. 

Bria Cloyd has some interesting moments with Stampley as her sister, but the more dazzlingly dramatic moments happen as her character is employed by the government to aid in comforting those who are being questioned about the horrors of apartheid. Corkins' police interrogator is one of those being questioned about his role. It's a really interesting dynamic between the two of them. There is a mutual respect between two people that is at odds with the total antipathy between two "peoples." It's fascinating to watch. 

In Tandem is one of those theatre companies in town taking on the challenge of doing serious drama. It's great to see it come across with this kind of vivd strength at the beginning of a season. 

In Tandem Theatre's production of Burying the Bones runs through October 27th at the Tenth Street Theatre on 628 North 10th Street. For ticket reservations, call 414-271-1371 or visit In Tandem online.  A far more concise review appears in the next Shepherd-Express courtesy of Harry Cherkinian.