I recently went back to my childhood hometown and visited family, and it called to mind a quote from my very favorite author, Elizabeth Berg: “You are born into your family, and your family is born into you. No returns. No exchanges.”
No one can simultaneously fill you up and let you down quite like your family members; they’re the key to who you are at your core, which is comforting, but also explains why they’re so skilled at pushing your buttons. The complicated nature of family and the places we call our roots are the inspiration for Gabriel Jason Dean’s Qualities of Starlight, which is currently in production at Sparks’ Restless Artists Theatre.
Qualities is one of the plays in Dean’s The Attapulgus Elegies series, which is loosely based on Dean’s own upbringing in rural Georgia and chronicles the decay of the Southern mill town. When the play opens, we meet Theo Turner (played by Matthew Highground), a highly trained cosmologist whose recent work has earned him accolades, yet that means little to his parents back home in their double-wide trailer in Attapulgus, Ga, who only know he does some highfalutin job related to stars. What they do know is that they haven’t seen Theo in five years—not since he got married to Polly (Alexandra Jobe). Now, all of a sudden, he’s announced that they’re coming for a visit, so he must want something.
His parents are Rose (Annikki Larsson) and Junior (Gary Cremeans), two poorly educated people who married young, after she got pregnant, and no longer have jobs, thanks to the local mill’s recent closure and Junior’s neuropathy, which qualifies him for disability benefits. These days, they mostly smoke meth to ease their physical and emotional pain, and it mostly works, though Rose has begun hallucinating predatory lizards, and Junior blacks out for hours at a time.
Theo and Polly arrive after a harrowing drive, during which they hit and killed a deer, and things only get worse from there. It turns out they do want something from Theo’s parents: their help with adopting a baby. But it soon becomes clear that Rose and Junior are in no state to do this favor, and now Theo and Polly have reached a breaking point: Would Rose and Junior be a liability in this journey to start a family, or could they actually help fix what’s really broken?
Though billed as a “twisted comedy,” Qualities of Starlight includes a lot of pain in its portrayal of poverty, drug addiction, the loss of identity and purpose, and the heartache of infertility. Rose and Junior have been broken by years of losses and are making their way as best they can, despite numerous failings. But with strong performances by seasoned actors Larsson and Cremeans, the couple earns our empathy, and even a kind of admiration. At times, when Theo and Polly need it most, the elder Turners are unexpectedly wise. Larsson’s ability to move the audience emotionally is especially impressive. Cremeans is an absolute natural as Junior, with his spot-on Southern accent and his rare ability to be vulnerable yet cocky, ignorant yet astute in his observations of others.
Meanwhile, Highground’s Theo transforms as the play progresses. The play’s most comedic scene takes him from the dull, cynical academic he was when he arrived to the curious, wide-eyed, optimistic boy he was when he first left home all those years ago—much to Polly’s delight.
There are moments in the show when the Southern accents are especially unbelievable; voices sometimes become shrill; and some characters will really rub you the wrong way. That said, RAT’s production of Qualities of Starlight will almost certainly move you, make you laugh—and remind you that your family loves you anyway.
Restless Artists Theatre Company’s production of Qualities of Starlightis being performed at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m., Sunday; and 6:30 p.m., Monday, through Monday, April 20, at 295 20th St., in Sparks. Tickets are $22.25 online, or $25 at the door, with discounts. For tickets or more information, visit rattheatre.com.