By Paul Horsley

What will we do in the evenings when the lights go out? How will we entertain ourselves when the nuclear cataclysm brings down the grid and there’s no electricity: no television, no internet, no cinema? These are questions playwright Anne Washburn asks in her brilliantly provocative Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, which the Unicorn Theatre presents from December 2nd through the 27th. “When you think about it, she’s really hit upon something,” says Ted Swetz, who directs the Unicorn/UMKC Theatre coproduction. “Where are we going to go? What are we going to do?”

Washburn’s 2012 play, which Ben Brantley wrote will “leave you dizzy with the scope and dazzle of its ideas” (The New York Times), is set in a dystopian world in which survivors try to create theater through half-remember episodes of The Simpsons (one in particular), films and even commercials. Its three acts span some 80 years of post-catastrophe existence, as society tries to find spiritual direction with art forms that can be performed by candlelight.

“The answer is the theater,” said Ted, who in addition to his activities on the UMKC faculty often directs at the Unicorn (Tribes) and sometimes appears onstage as well (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo). “The theater can be comforting. The theater can see you through.”

Yet as the players of Mr. Burns try to reconstruct the Simpson’s episode “Cape Feare,” a parody of the 1962 film Cape Fear and its 1991 remake, they find their reminiscences are imperfect, and vary widely. Later they create sets and costumes, including skewed, half-remembered masks of Simpsons characters, and even invent staged re-creations of the TV commercials that might have accompanied a “Simpsons” edpisode. “It’s about the comfort that one gets with something that you and I had in common,” Ted said, “at a time when we were happy.”

But the comfort is short-lived, as a stranger enters the play to inform everyone that something terrible has happened. “There is absolutely no electricity and many people are dead,”  Ted continued. “And then you find out it’s a tremendous apocalyptic event.” By Act II, the eight players of this play (which includes music by Michael Friedman) have created a whole theater company around the idea of common experience, a sort of “theater as comfort food,” Ted said. “There are a lot of interesting connections one could make” to historical aspects of theater, he added. “It’s hard not to think of ancient Greece, of the festivals they’d have when the whole community would come together to see plays. Or Passion Plays, even, during medieval times.” Indeed, by Act III this “shared experience” begins to take on the nature of a religion.

The three acts of Mr. Burns have often been performed as two acts, but Ted and Unicorn Producing Artistic Director Cynthia Levin have decided to separate them, so that audience members have more time to converse between acts. “There’s a lot to talk about in the lobby,” Ted said. “And that actually serves the play, too, because as they’re seeing these people onstage come together as a community, the lobby will develop into a sort of a little community. Even if it’s: ‘Oh my gosh! What’s going on?’”

Ted said he loves working at the Unicorn because of its courage to take on the best of the new and the bold: highly personal works that often benefit from an intimate stage. “It’s proven to be a real hotbed of contemporary writing,” he said. “The intimacy of Cynthia’s knowledge of current playwrights is incredible. She is a force in getting the most interesting plays on that stage, plays that make us think.”

Photos courtesy of the Unicorn Theatre. From top: actors Edwin Brown III, Manon Halliburton, Maya Jackson, Mariem Diaz and Matt Rapport.

For tickets to Mr. Burn: A Post-Electric Play, which runs from December 2nd through the 27th, call 816-531-7529 or go to unicorntheatre.org. See Anne Washburn chat briefly about her play here.

Reach Paul Horsley at phorsley@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook (paul.horsley.501) or Twitter (@phorsleycritic).