129 miles to Walmart a motley collection that will hold your attention

By Joanna Brady

The title of this production evokes those emails we sometimes get with kookie people dressed in strange clothes who shop at Walmart. But this play has nothing to do with the store. It just refers to the fact that Key West is 129 miles from the nearest Walmart, located in Homestead. Any city that far from a Walmart has to be a little weird, right?

It’s a group of six very short original plays about off-the-wall people, written by a group of mostly new writers who live here, a city not like anywhere else in the country. All are one-act, celebrating those who are living their lives a bit on the edge of what most people consider normal. 129 Miles From Walmart opened on Friday at the Key West Theater, 512 Eaton St.

The theater, with its cabaret seating and a bar, is home to the new School for Performing Arts begun by Michael Marrero and Juliet Gray, so it shouldn’t be surprising that some of the plays are bold and experimental in content and performance. It’s good to see so many fresh new faces on stage, and to become familiar with the writing of so many aspiring dramatists.

For theater goers with short attention spans, this is a great format. The plays vary in lengths, tone and content. As there are eleven of them, I can only highlight a few that intrigued me: The motley selection includes a fascinating play by veteran writer/director Bob Bowersox about the spirit world and reincarnation adventures to other dimensions, called “Going Again.”

Erin McKenna makes an ebullient appearance in this fantasy play. And Phillip Cole White, a talent who shows much promise, is in this as well. He reappears, along with Colin Bevis and Erin McKenna in “Just the Tip”, a funny play—naughtier in vein—by Jon Rhoads and directed by Michael Marrero, which takes place at a weather station on a melting iceberg in Antarctica.

White also stars in “Bob Goes to the Park,” by playwright Michael Marrero, directed by Juliet Gray, addressing the current age of constant connection to all things via cell phones and the Internet. In this play, Bob is forced to power down at a park and is amazed at what happens without all the Internet’s intrusions when he does.

Threading through the play are a couple of love affairs, an innocent one read to us from her diary by writer Joanie Sullivan; another which is a lofty enactment of the seduction of Daphne by Apollo through that wily facilitator, Cupid.

Talented actors Colin Bevis, Brian Furlong, Erin McKenna, Phillip Cole White, and Alexandra Zeto star in a variety of roles. Zeto is a particularly gifted and versatile actor, as she shows us in “Cockwater,” a scary little play where she wanders through the audience. The plays’ directors feature Juliet Gray, Bob Bowersox, Stephanie Anarumo, Michael Marrero and Phillip Cole White.

129 miles from Walmart continues till March 18. For more information, call 305 985-0433 or email [email protected]

(Joanna Brady is a local writer, author of Key West historical novel, The Woman at the Light, published by St. Martin’s Press)

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