Review: Katie Guentzel bites into a juicy role at Penumbra

Actor Kate Guentzel has distinguished herself in many a role on Twin Cities stages, including her Ivey Award-winning portrayal of an Eastern European immigrant in "My Antonia." But those performances were just a warm-up for her current work in "Dutchman" at Penumbra Theatre.

Throwing herself full-throttle into Amiri Baraka's classic one-act about a black man and a white woman who meet with fatal consequences on a New York subway train, Guentzel dives deeply into the cracked psyche of sexy, capricious Lula, looking like a glazed banshee who has escaped a cult.

Guentzel's magnificent performance anchors director Lou Bellamy's gripping and unsettling revival of Baraka's 1964 play that opened Thursday in St. Paul, paired with another one-act dealing with our racial heritage, Adrienne Kennedy's "The Owl Answers."

She stars opposite Nathan Barlow, an actor who has matured before our eyes. He, too, delivers a performance to sing about.

His character, Clay, is a sacrificial lamb in Baraka's play about the nation's racial subconscious. Barlow plays the role like a fine violin — measured, even noble for most of the show, even as Lula tells him things he didn't know about himself.

In his suit and tie, Clay thinks he's a middle-class guy on his way to a party. Biting into the apple she offers him tells Clay he is not that at all. Like a bullfighter, Lula goads him into anger, drawing out an animal nature that she then has to put down.

Kennedy's 1965 play takes place on the same subway-car set, cleverly designed by Maruti Evans. (The action is meaningfully lit by Marcus Dilliard and the grabby costumes were designed by Mathew LeFebvre.) The set is gradually transformed into a prison for the central character in "Owl," Clara Passmore.

Played by Austene Van, she is the daughter of a white man and a black woman who was a teenaged servant in a white Georgia household. Clara's father has died and she wants to bury him in England. Achorus of figures from history, including Anne Boleyn (Jamecia Bennett), Shakespeare (Guentzel), Chaucer (Brian Frutiger) and William the Conqueror (Peter Moore), disdain her. They call her a bastard.

Directed by Talvin Wilks, who memorably staged "The Ballad of Emmett Till" two years ago at Penumbra, "Owl" is full of rich poetic imagery and an absurdist approach that put the playwright in the company of Ionesco and Beckett. Van finds heart and honesty in Clara's emotional journey but the play's thin narrative arc gets snuffed out under the weight of its metaphors.

rpreston@startribune.com

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