Your Whole Life Has Been Leading Up to This...

The Milk Can Theatre Company's production of Ashes deserves a big "bravo" and a longer performance run. Squeezed into a very short 2 and a half week schedule, Ashes delivers Arthur Miller like drama making your mind turn to the sad and sometimes dark areas of your life you never want to look at until that very moment culminates.

Everyone who has a sibling can admit to thinking what will things be like after their parents die. Who plays the role of moderator from this point on and what happens when old feelings like jealously start to resurface? Are their some basic childlike instincts that we just can't move ourselves away from no matter how hard we try?

This situation for which no child can ever truly prepare for is the focus of Ashes. Two sisters of a sub-par childhood are left to relinquish the memories and sift through their broken and estranged relationship to inadvertently see if there is anything left worth repairing. Madeline (Carolyn McDermott) and Leanne (Nicole duFresne) are sisters with only DNA in common who are brought back together after learning of their mother's death secondhand through a lawyer. Madeline, the older and more bitter sister shows no remorse for her mother's passing and portrays an attitude that life will carry on just as messed up as it had before. Leanne, the younger and more forgiving sister, needs to show her deceased mother respect despite the unstable childhood she provided for them and re-establish some sort of relationship between her sister.

The plot of the play immediately swallows up the audience into the sadness of the situation and does not let go of its grip. By Ashes tapping into the reality of our lives as bluntly and as sorrowful as it does, we are forced to recognize the things that we haven't, or didn't want to acknowledge our entire lives. Take for example the dialogue between Madeline and Leanne which plays out like a Freudian therapy session, where observation and dialogue is the telltale sign of the relationship. The overtones of Madeline's words speak of jealousy and are obvious as she complains about the poor role their mother played while growing up. Her disgust over the situation is then transferred to Leanne, blaming her birth as the moment when the normal life their family once led, began to unravel. 

As heavy as the subject in Ashes was, ML Kinney did a brilliant job in the composition of the script. The humor is parallel to Quentin Tarantino's where it is just raw enough and over the top enough to make you laugh despite the situation. Kinney represents comic relief in its purest form. "We can't even dance on her grave," Madeline sneers to her sister as she looks at the urn, "Now we have to find a creative way to throw out the trash."

All the basic elements of theater were met and exceeded in this production. The Milk Can Theatre Company worked with what it had to make great costume and set choices, but above all, the casting was superb. The black and white extremes of each character are portrayed so convincingly that the audience truly feels a pit in their stomach over a topic that is entirely relatable. 

Although Ashes wouldn't win the "feel-good play of the year" award, it is poignant yet humorous, and carries a dynamite cast with an identifiable message - a credit to all involved in the production. The Milk Can Theatre Company should definitely be proud of this one.