‘Sparrows Fall’ Sounds Alarm About Current Politics

The Sparrows Fall company – Norvell Commons Theatre, Milwaukee, WI. Photo by by Richard Gustin.

No question. Today’s human race is hibernating. It has got to stop popping pills and speaking in clichés to avoid facing up to the inhumanity of today’s political world.

Our souls sure need a direct, literate harangue about the dark realities clouding our existence. Poetic chants as well as images can bring home Auschwitz, Selma, Palestine and Iran, making us own up (even better with dollops of sardonic humor) to our failures to engage.

Wouldn’t the lecture be better with theatrical skill in inescapable confines where our own clichés of avoidance are thrown back at us in the dialogue? And not just from playwright and director Richard Gustin, but from a dozen talented readers and singers who break from unison chants to spin off into recognizable characters much like those you find in any theater audience.

The actors are always holding scripts in hand, like a church service, and a few hidden homegrown instruments are scattered about. The occasional music is devoted to spirituals, folkish melodies and an introductory piano suite of Bob Dylan songs — in case you aren’t getting the message.

Perhaps beating us over the head with our own behavior is not a recipe for everyone, even with talented dialogue, but this is the clear and sometimes repetitious intention of Sparrows Fall. The title harkens to Matthew, when Jesus reminded listeners that God is aware of every sparrow that perishes.

The play is part of World Premiere Wisconsin, a statewide festival of new plays and musicals that established theaters like the Rep and the Skylight are also participating in.

Gustin, a playwright, actor and teacher whose brother Tom was part of the original Theatre X here – as was his centrally placed stage reader, Flora Coker in Sparrows Fall — first formed this play as a fundraiser for Chicago theaters. His new, self-promoted RG Productions has allied with Theatre Gigante, a noted here-and-there Milwaukee presence for decades led by Mark Anderson and Isabelle Kralj, whose works I have reviewed several times.

Familiar onstage participants – six women and six men — include David Flores, who has acted for many theaters here; PR representative and actor A.J. Magoon; and Joel Dresang, who worked with me as a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal and has established a secondary career onstage.

The location emphasizes the theme — a small theater in the basement of a River Hills church where the performers confront us on stools and lecterns, forcing us by their mass number and skill to listen to how we evade responsibility while trading sad stories (such as that of Jacob, the boy approaching 13 when bundled on a train to Auschwitz) and then breaking off into individual turns and personalities. This method keeps us watching for a new facet to emerge from the mass.

For theater insiders, it may be a surprising venue (though Acacia Theater has presented Christian-themed works before in the 99-seat basement theater in the Novell Commons next to St. Christopher Church). For this production, there is an obvious limitation in stage height for the projections, which play behind a crowded stage of actors. The words and archived images are perfectly timed to the script, but the audience can only catch glimpses.

After intermission, the synchronization is better and the satire more obvious than the meditation aspects of the piece. Actor Christopher Goode steps out of the crowd (his video echo flashing behind him) to take over the service as a bullying Southern preacher whose rage at us and commands for obedience sound much like Donald Trump. It is a humorous highlight that Goode enjoys to the hilt in a project that has deft touches but pins us to the wall of guilt like a butterfly, without letting us fly on our own.

Sparrows Fall performs Thursdays to Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., with Sunday matinees through April 26 at Novell Commons, a 99-seat theater next to St. Christopher’s Church, 7845 N. River Rd., River Hills, Wisconsin. Tickets are $18 for seniors and $15 for students.

Sparrow Fall Gallery

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here. For his Dom’s Snippets, an unusual family history and memoir, go to domnoth.substack.com.