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Theatre LILA's Excellent 'Suitcase' is a
Must-Open
B Y A A R O N R . C O N K L I N
PHOTO COURTESY OF THEATRE LILA
Suitcases can be filled with a lot of things, both physical and metaphorical—clothing, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
hopes, fears, our histories and emotional baggage. And as Theatre LILA's wonderfully creative The Suitcase Dreams (playing
noiw through September 28 at Overture Center) demonstrates, they can also contain unbrilded doses of pure theatrical
magic. The proceedings begin even before you’ve entered the Overture’s Promenade space. Actors carrying sturdy-­looking
suitcases dash, dance and pantomime routines in the Overture Center rotunda, capturing the attention of both soon-­to-­be
audience members and passersby. By the time you’ve entered the Promenade to find a long, horizontal stage dotted by
suitcases at either end, you’re ready for anything.
And that’s essentially what Theatre LILA delivers over the uninterrupted course of the next two hours. The modus operandi of
Jessica Lanius and Mike Lawler's company, which onluy arrived in Madison via New York last January, is to mesh theater,
music and dance, and that formula is on full display here. The actors who are dancers, like Ariel "AJ" Juarez, bring a fluidity
of motion that's gorgeous to behold. The actors of the twelve-­member cast who aren't, meanwhile, move as if they were. The suitcases themselves dot the show, serving as fixed and movable props as well as stage business. Actors climb in and
out of them, open and close them, swing and caress them, hold them up like balloons and drop them like ten-­ton weights.
They serve as cenetrpieces for stories and supply closets for madcap dress-­up games. The show’s framing device centers on a young girl named Grace—played with luminous energy by twelve-­year-­old Emma
Dias—who has her suitcase packed but is terrified to leave for the big, bad world that awaits her. “I’ll take everything with me,
leave nothing behind,” she says multiple times, voicing a boldness the rest of her has yet to quite embrace.
The show’s effectiveness hinges on the way that many of the characters, props and themes recur, looping back like the
leathered straps of yet another suitcase. The couple we meet in Lanius’s “I Do,” a young pair of newlyweds who discover the
literal and figurative weight of the baggage they’re each carrying, show up at later stages of their relationship, arguing and
reconciling. The suitcases recovered from the sea and stacked high by the residents of a small Newfoundland town in Gwen
Rice’s “Devil Fish” become a tower of annoying and comedic possibilities for a sad French clown played by Michael Huftile
just a few moments later. Huftile and his happier partner-­clowndom, Michael Herold, own some ofthe show's most hilarious
moments. The vignettes are poetic, to the point of sometimes being spoken in rhymed verse. Some are poignant, like “This is the End,”
a piece that finds Herold and Mark Snowden playing a pair of old men paralyzed by the thought of leaving their family home
—until they decide to take the plunge in their pajamas. Others are clever and comical, like Gwen Rice’s ‘Lost and Found,” a
piece in which a raspy Sam Spade (Herold again) interacts with lost objects come to life, like a slick Blackberry played by
Di’Monte Henning. Like opening a mysterious suitcase, you’re never quite sure what’s coming next, and it all adds to the
sense of wonderment and magic.
So does Erin Crabb’s musical score, which punctuates the proceedings in a manner both ethereal and arresting, especially
in its use of Schlomo Calvo's hang drums, an instrument that seems and sounds itself like something out of a dream.
The Suitcase Dreams is easily one of the most memorable original pieces Madison's seen in quite some time. Like any
worthwhile fantasy, it intrudes on reality in thought-­provoking ways—even long after you've left the theater.