Local playwright Ben Turk successfully breathed life into a script he's been writing for years when Insurgent Theatre brought Ulysses' Crewmen to the tiny space of Cream City Collectives this past weekend.
Kate Pleuss plays a modern revolutionary who, during the G-20 trade summit, kidnaps a member of the U.S. delegation, played by Ben Turk. The entire one-act play takes place in the same room. Things have gone bad for the revolutionaries, and Pleuss' character is left to figure out what to do with the delegate she's taken hostage.
Pleuss brilliantly handles the challenge of providing nearly all of the drama in this play, since the delegate spends most of the time hooded and all of the time gagged. Turk's performance, though interesting, doesn't fully bring forth the subtle, physical drama of being brutally incarcerated. But he does manage to create a fascinating dynamic by portraying someone who is truly frightened, yet also coherent enough to appear somewhat complicit in his own incarceration. Pleuss, meanwhile, carries both a strict sense of duty as a revolutionary and a compelling sense of compassion as a human being.
The issues raised in Ulysses' Crewmen are messy and complicated. As a result, the play itself feels messy and complicated-a drama animated by a dark brutality.
Ulysses' Crewmen will be staged again at 7 p.m. on Aug. 23 at the Borg Ward (823 W. National Ave.). After that, the show will tour intimate venues across the Midwest and the East Coast.
