Review: A/C Theatre Company Presents NOW. HERE. THIS.

If your tastes gravitate toward the philosophical and reflective, then NOW. HERE. THIS. may fit your preferred bill of fare. Be advised, however, that the play ~ the product of the cool-aboration between Hunter Bell, Jeff Bowen, Susan Blackwell and Heidi Blickenstaff, the team that created [title of show] ~ is more of a light but flavorful appetizer, a mixed salad, let's say, of personal recollections and reflections, garnished with a mélange of witty and poignant songs, and not so filling that it will strain your digestive capabilities but perhaps juicy enough to whet your interest in savoring richer theatrical entrees about identity and purpose or perhaps inviting you to seek out the works of Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, poet, and author of The Seven Storey Mountain, whose exhortation frames the title of the play and invokes the imperative of the contemplative life and the search for meaning.

The good news is that Phoenix's A/C Theatre Company has sweetened the appetizer with a production featuring the delectable and spirited performances of Tracy Payne Black, Brenda Jean Foley, Kevin Fenderson, and Micah Jondel DeShazer as four characters in search of their personal author.

Gathered together for a special discount day at the natural history museum (where better to gain perspective on one's place in space and time!), the foursome tour various exhibits, each hall (reptiles, minerals and gems, birds, oceans, etc.) inspiring remembrances of moments past ~ those moments of angst-ridden youth that shaped each of them into the persons they are at this moment in this place. The ribbon that ties their pasts and presents together is the shared desire they had to be acknowledged and understood for the true persons they were and the pressure they experienced to mask their true identities.

It is the quest for identity and purpose that is at the core of NOW. HERE. THIS. It is through remembering, reflecting, and sharing their stories that the truth of Merton's Zen-like promise is revealed ~ that by mindfully navigating the path from "Who I am" to "What I want to be" and then to an affirmation of "Who I'll be," that by embracing the moment, then will they be free to truly appreciate life.

Directed by Thomas Strawser and choreographed by Lynzee Foreman and Shani Barrett, A/C Theatre Company's production of NOW. HERE. THIS. runs through March 26th at the Hardes Theatre at Phoenix Theatre.

Photo credit to Laura Durant

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