This world premiere of a one act play by Doug Phillips  is a work of  futuristic hyper-naturalism that grabs us by the jugular because it seems perfectly logical and almost too plausible.

The remnants of a poor family sit around the table discussing family matters that almost seem banal.  In the first few minutes,  Phillips sets out  his clues.  The family is steeped in  misery, water is lacking and there are  fires in the area which has become a sort of agricultural waste – land managed by sharecroppers. Something  weird is happening in the barn behind the house,  as the scraping sounds ignite our curiosity. Then,  there is some terrible secret  hanging over them all.  We meet the family members at that point and it  doesn’t take us  long to see that sister Ellen is suffering the loss of a loved one,  that young Kelsie is waiting for her new date, that Charlie her father is also Ellen’s brother and he  is  the tortured head of this  “natural” family. The atmosphere suggests   Eugene O’Neil’s  grungy realism especially since the characters could possibly be  the actors themselves and we  wonder where this is going. …

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