Fans of Garrison Keillor will know the territory covered by this show, the semi-folksy world of Lutheran Minnesota. This show is better than Keillor. Less whimsical, less sentimental. Tougher.
21A is a bus route, and the play is a kind of portrait gallery of the people who use it, starting with the driver. We learn that Route 6 is the best one, the most upmarket. The 21A is full of weirdos, and the poor. The driver is a philosopher: ‘We’re all in some kind of a box. Some people are box people, some aren’t’. He goes off to get a coffee before the bus sets off, and gradually it fills up with passengers.
We meet the old woman with her husband, Big Bob, and her cat, Little Bob. Little Bob is the one she talks to. There’s Kieron, a member of the Church of Democratic Progression trying to solicit donations. There’s the drunk – ‘two weeks ago I had a beautiful job and a full-time wife’. Now living under a bridge terrified of the other winos, he spends his time with a box on his head and so on. Neal’s gallery is completed by Steve and his Imaginary Friend – ‘We got into this real big fight. We’re not talking’. Steve – the Retard, as other passengers call him – has a gun: ‘This is not a robbery, but I am going to need all your money’. He needs it to feed the ticket machine. ‘We’ve got to feed the bus. If we don’t feed the bus it will starve’. He manages to raise $1.07 - that’s how poor the passengers are. The show ends with a paean to public transport before the driver returns and the bus sets off.
Such a simple concept, but it is beautifully and cleverly written by Minnesotan writer Kevin Kling. Each of the monologues intersects with others; half a conversation in one is complemented by the other half in another. The gunshots – yes, Steve wounds someone – provide the chronological reference so we always know where we are in sequence. The quick changes are covered by an ongoing conversation between the driver and the waitress in the station café: ‘What do you mean, you haven’t got Coffeemate? You mean I got to put liquid shit in my coffee?’
Neal Beckman plays all eight characters with precision and affection, though he could do with working on a tad more vocal range. The writing is warm and humane. In a Free Fringe dominated by stand-up, it is a rare pleasure to come across something as mature as this little masterpiece. It has so much to say and says it very entertainingly.
