There’s a fair amount of tantalizing ambiguity to interpret in the world premiere of “Turret,” Levi Holloway’s cryptic, vivid survivalist story. Although to clarify, the three-man production from A Red Orchid Theatre is not merely a tale of survival in a post-apocalyptic world.
Running through June 9 and directed by the playwright, “Turret” is a multi-genre labyrinth that incorporates sci-fi, thriller and horror into a story that depicts the devastation of loneliness, the pull of parental love and that peculiar, unnerving strain of deja vu that hits so hard it makes you question the soundness of your mind and memory.
Featuring A Red Orchid ensemble members Michael Shannon, Lawrence Grimm and Travis A. Knight, “Turret” will startle your eyes and bend your brain.
Don’t dally if you want tickets: Shannon’s program bio doesn’t mention his Oscar nominations (“Revolutionary Road,” “Nocturnal Animals”), but when the big screen/Broadway/"Boardwalk Empire” veteran shows up in a Red Orchid cast, you can safely assume tickets will be in high demand. Wisely, A Red Orchid has moved “Turret” from the company’s tiny, hallowed Old Town space to West Town’s roomier Chopin Theatre.
But it’s not Shannon we see first when the lights come slowly up on an image straight out of a Michael Crichton novel. Amid a crackling buzz that sounds like twitching live wires, a dim figure running on a treadmill emerges from the cinematic murk (tremendous work by lighting designer Mike Durst and sound designer/composer Jeffrey Levin throughout).
We’re in a circular bunker that’s all stark lighting and harsh, metallic edges. There’s a surreal, nightmarish quality to everything. Rabbit (Knight) is wearing a halo of wires that squiggle up from his skull like electrified hair, giving the impression he’ll be sucked into a massive ceiling fan if his frantic pace falters. His scalp, we eventually see, is plugged into a computer that allows him to communicate telepathically.
Lurking in the shadows like a mad scientist is Green (Shannon), who asks the questions and runs the computer. To Rabbit, he’s a father figure, commanding officer and prison warden.
Their “conversation” — projected on the bunker’s rounded walls in a font that evokes the AOL chat rooms of the 1990s — fills in the jagged pieces of their circumstances. There’s been a global catastrophe. Rabbit and Green might be the only survivors. They live according to an “edict” they repeatedly recite: They are a country of two. Their allegiance is to their country. Their mission is to hold their position until reinforcements arrive. They don’t know if that will ever happen.
Between their haunting treadmill sessions and Pong-like computer games (Paul Deziel’s projections are strikingly retro, as you’d expect in a destroyed world), Green and Rabbit sing and dance to 1950s crooners. When they awkwardly embrace in a dance, “Turret” highlights the essential sweetness of genuine human connection.
But even then, an edge of ever-present violence cuts through the refuge/killing field that set designer Grant Sabin manages to render both bleak and homey. The music can’t erase the blazing, clanking furnace in the turret, a crematorium-sized oven that feeds on animals and people alike.
Rabbit and Green’s affectionate, combative relationship is also defined by ongoing, harrowing diminishment: Both men are slowly forgetting their words — particularly the words used to evoke or capture human emotion. “Something kind,” Green will say between arguments about whether Rabbit can leave their turret. “Something kind back,” Green responds. It’s an eerie depiction of mental decline prompted by isolation.
Their “country” of two grows by a third when Birdy (Grimm) makes his way to their bunker, sporting a bearskin cloak over a battered tuxedo. In those two garments, costume designer Myron Elliott captures both the savagery of the current world and the tattered remnants of the world that’s been all lost.
As the dynamic in the turret shifts with Birdy’s arrival, Holloway’s dialogue twists toward an unexpected threat. Annihilation could come from within the turret as well as without. Like werewolves beneath a blossoming moon, the trio in the bunker virtually reek of something bestial, monstrous and barely contained under a mask of human skin.
The all-star cast here packs Holloway’s words with tension and vigor, crafting a verbal puzzle that shifts and mutates, ultimately leaving questions that will swarm through your brain long after the curtain call.
Shannon moves from glowering, ruthless authority to playful affection with riveting intensity. Grimm delivers both comedy and chaos with equal impact. Monster or mortal, Knight’s alternately endearing and unnerving Rabbit has charisma to burn.
In turns, ominous, humorous and flat-out weird, “Turret” is a star turn for everyone involved.
