On a golf course fairway, fairway … .
OK, that’s not as deft as the “Star Wars” crawl, but in these theater-depleted times, the Catamounts’ “The Rough” is a welcome adventure — and then some. The Boulder-based company has added a fresh set of dates for the sold-out outdoor, socially distanced romp at Westminster’s Legacy Ridge Golf Course, through Sept. 6.
Written and directed by Jessica Jackson, “The Rough” is among the slowly growing number of shows and performances working to maintain health protocols while delivering live performances. While a number of “drive-ins” are cropping up (the recently announced pivot for Film on the Rocks and the itchy-O Sypherlot “radio bath” among them ) and as #artfindsus continues its third Thursday arts amble through Denver’s council districts, “The Rough” offers a witty “drive-through” experience.
If you go
The Catamount’s “The Rough.” Directed by and written (in collaboration with the ensemble) by Jessica Jackson. Featuring Sean Michael Cummings, Kebrina Josefina De Jesús, Tresha Farris, Sam Gilstrap, Brian Kusic and Maggie Tisdale. At the Legacy Golf Club in Westminster, 10801 Legacy Ridge Pkwy, Westminster. Weds-Sundays, through Aug. 30, 7:15 p.m.; Sept. 2 – 6, 7 p.m. For information and tickets: catamounts.org or 720-468-0487. NOTE: ”The Rough” begins at 7:15 sharp (and starting Sept. 2, it will start at 7). The no-curtain time means there will be light and heat, dusk and dark, bats flitting and a few mosquitos feasting.
Written and directed by Jessica Jackson — with collaborative caddying by the theater company’s ensemble — the piece is subtitled “A Play in Nine Holes.”
Dressed in a tartan kilt, a Scotsman (Brian Kusic) greets and leads the gathered on something of a “chase.” (Any pursuit in which the vehicle is a golf cart deserves ironic quotes.) You can share the golf cart with one other person (from your pod of familiars), but patrons are asked to stay 6 feet apart and must wear masks; temperatures are taken before audience members head to the audio receiver station. The bone-conduction headphones allow for the soundtrack and surrounding sounds.
With its appropriately pokey golf carts, clever turns of phrase and philosophical bent, “The Rough” proves to be a heady and amusing ride.
The Scotsman’s loamy, rolling Rs may put you in the mind of a fog-shrouded moor. What we get is a lesson in the mythical roots of the game of stick and ball that unfolds on the course’s front nine. The Scotsman plays a bit of the fool as he chases after Paganica, who centuries earlier was his paramour. The performance’s good-natured mood owes much to Kusic’s goofball brogue narration.
A swing hangs from a cottonwood near the fourth hole’s tee box. There, a beast with many a moniker — Sasquatch, Yeti, Big Foot — tries to persuade a beauty in a lemony yellow gown to free him from his cage. The wild, the tame and the rough that links them get thorough consideration in Jackson’s playful script.
“The Rough” maintains a poignant and potent tension between the joys as well as the societal wrinkles of the setting. Without biting the hand that hosts it, the play poses a fine number of questions about walls and belonging, the wild and the tamed, the mythical and the modern. It’s sincere and teasing, even as it wends its way along paths bordered by large, upscale homes.
The city of Westminster commissioned the piece, and the golf course is a municipal one. Even so, what to make of the quartet of trim seniors looking at the procession of golf carts snaking its way around a curve one recent Saturday evening? And what do they make of Paganica’s frolicking down the green? (The one frustration was that dancer/co-choreographer Kebrina Josefina De Jesús’ performances took place a little too far off in the distance.)
There’s a loose charm to the acting. The scene between Wildman (Sean Michael Cummings) and Princess (Tresha Farris) has the sweet tug, the soft-edged frights and kindly laughs of children’s theater. If you’re wondering at the pre-COVID proximity of the star-crossed pair, Cummings and Farris are a couple.
Later, when the convoy pulls into a tunnel, the acoustics prove perfect for actress Maggie Tisdale’s song of golf and lost love, a golf-cart halting, showstopper of a tune. The path is also part of the Farmers High Line Canal Trail. In an example of unsolicited improv, a cyclist — his kid in a buggy — rode past the scene.
Around the next bend, a man squats near a water hazard. You may mistake him for a straggler. Sam Gilstrap portrays Big Brother, the easy-going mentor. He offers an introductory lesson to unseen young’uns even as the cicadas dial up their electric whine, and the soundtrack delivers a slew of kids asking questions and tittering each time he says “balls.”
(Matthew Schlief is responsible for the wonderfully textured sound design as well as the aspects of the production not credited to nature or golf course architect Arthur Hills.)
Not all is played for laughs. Big Brother tells these “littles’ of his first encounter with the beloved game and also promises “anyone can play golf.” He then goes on to ruminate on the ways that declaration is — and isn’t — true.
In another tunnel, one beneath Federal Boulevard, a winking reprise sets up an equally clever repetition. On a different stretch of green, the couple who earlier portrayed the beauty and the beast meet again, this time as two rather bored guests (each an allergy sufferer) of a wedding party. She’s still clad in yellow; he wears a three-piece suit. He gets touchy, believing she’s approached him to hear his tale of an unbelievable, oft-doubted sighting.
Turns out, she’s got a story of her own to tell. It’s oddly more fantastical for being rooted in this nation’s history of race. It concerns the Buffalo Soldiers and a bicycle sojourn from Missoula to St. Louis. (Look it up; it’s worth it.)
A scientist in a lab coat (Tisdale) offers a final parable, one about the invention of a scale to measure “wildness.” These linked vignettes have come to resemble parables, offering telling insights about the wild rubbing against the tame, the natural pushing against the too cultivated and repurposed.
Theater types are notoriously fond of saying each night’s performance is different than any other. This proves especially true during “The Rough.” As Wildman juggled feather golf balls on a recent evening, a dog neared a fence and barked and woofed. A jet crawled across the blue expanse above, as the big guy in the brown fake fur getup theorized about what exactly constitutes a kingdom. What is caged and what is kept out? Whose gestures of hunger or lonesomeness are constantly misread — and feared?
Theatrically speaking, “The Rough” also plays with the relationship of the much-touted “immersive” to the “old school” observed. Under the artistic direction of Amanda Berg Wilson, the Catamounts continues to grow increasingly deft limning the spaces between the two.
Early in the show, the Scotsman shares that as much as he pines after Paganica, saying he misses “her stories most of all.” And his wistfulness for engaging tales carries a resounding pang for the audience as “The Rough” unfolds, the sun waning behind the Front Range: Live theater! Oh, how we’ve miss(ed) you.
