written by David Mamet
directed by Annelise Christ
February 16 – March 3, 2007
Minneapolis Theatre Garage
John cannot sleep. The night before his first big camping trip. His father will soon be home. But something is wrong, and the adults aren’t saying what. David Mamet’s sharp-edged world of fear and deceit is seen through a child’s eyes when he discovers how knowledge can be more dangerous than secrets. A shattering masterpiece of betrayal and the American family from the Pulitzer-winning author of Oleanna and Glengarry Glen Ross.
Cast
Production Team
| john | Jake Ingbar | director | Annelise Christ |
| donny | Annie Enneking | set | Robert Fuecker |
| del | Peter Ooley | costumes | Suzanne Jankowski |
| props | Amy Rummenie | ||
| lighting | Jenny DeGolier | ||
| sound/music | Greg Brosofske | ||
| stage manager | Rachel Mullins | ||
| dramaturg | John Heimbuch | ||
| sound board operator | Annette Pew | ||
| stage crew | Hannah Kittelson | ||
| photography | Christopher Bowlsby |
Reviews
Walking Shadow Theatre Company, a group of idealistic youngsters, is one of the new entries in the small-theater scene, assuming the mantle from artists exhausted by the grind of creating work for little recompense. I became aware of Walking Shadow, which has been around since 2004, through an eerie and ambitious piece in last summer’s Fringe Festival. They are back at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage with David Mamet’s “The Cryptogram,” a 65-minute tryptych in which a small family’s homeostasis is ritually hollowed out when a father bails out. Annelise Christ, whose Hidden Theatre was once a darling of the small scene, directs with a brisk clip that matches Mamet’s trademark concision.
– Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
David Mamet’s one-act show is a dramatic shell game. One moment you think you have your eyes on the pea, then the subtext beneath the action changes altogether, leaving you scrambling to reconsider the events in a new context. (It also leaves you writing convoluted sentences in trying to describe it all.) The setup is simple enough: Donny (Annie Enneking) is hanging fire with Del (Peter Ooley), waiting for her husband to return home and take her son John (Jake Ingbar) on a camping trip the next morning… Director Annelise Christ’s cast tightens the screws and extracts a good deal of real emotion from this potentially sterile contraption. And fifth-grader Ingbar hangs in effectively amid a mountain of verbiage and a character whose nature is ultimately the final piece to the mystery. At an hour and 15 minutes, this Walking Shadow Theatre Company production delivers a coherent and entirely viewable take on a work of bleak cruelty. You don’t walk out with a smile on your face, but you may have some realizations about your own tightrope walk, with chaos on one side and meaning on the other. Now, put the knife down, John. I’m serious.
– Quinton Skinner, City Pages
