Theater Review - Colorado: Miss(ing) congeniality

Imagine a beauty pageant contestant eschewing an exuberant song-and-dance number for the talent portion of the competition, and instead delivering a blistering stand-up routine about the corruption in the American dream. That’s sort of the way Dad’s Garage Theatre’s Colorado feels, in comparison to the Inman Park playhouse’s previous season openers.

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In recent years, Dad’s Garage reliably kicked off its new seasons with musical versions of such cult movies as Debbie Does Dallas and Reefer Madness, along with the original stage version of The Rocky Horror Show. This time, artistic director Kate Warner flips the script with a nonmusical: Colorado, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s pitch-dark comedy about beauty pageants, talk-show culture and the Colorado suburbs. You can appreciate the theater’s desire to alternate a formula before it gets stale, but Colorado’s off-puttingly sour vision doesn’t really live up to the play’s strong, intriguing introduction and strong central performances.

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Colorado begins with Tracey Ackhart (Elizabeth Neidel) winning the Miss Late Teen Colorado competition and delivering her acceptance speech with such intensity that her joy is almost indistinguishable from fury. Shortly before the National Pageant, however, Tracey disappears on the way to “Beauty Practice,” to the concern of her mother, Grace (Kathleen Wattis); her father, Ron (Doyle Reynolds); and her younger brother, Travis (Randy Havens).

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Although they’re initially distraught, in Tracey’s absence the quietly dysfunctional family dynamic quickly turns louder and more confrontational, like the brood from a Eugene O’Neill play relocated to a contemporary subdivision. Grace and Ron both wonder if they’ve wasted their lives, while Travis reveals an unwholesome obsession with talk-show host Maury Povich. Flashbacks reveal Tracey to be monstrously self-absorbed as she bullies Travis and expertly manipulates both parents. Neidel plays Tracey’s hateful shallowness with such zest, she might as well be a beauty queen from the great state of Hell.

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Rather than portray Grace simply as a shrewish stereotype of a control-freak stage mom, Wattis initially plays her with sympathy and naturalism. When Grace begins roaring at her son and lashing out at her husband, Wattis delivers plenty of comedic punch while still portraying a credible character. “Why did I stop drinking? Or smoking? Or binge-eating?” she demands of the empty living room. Havens and Reynolds both capture their roles’ desperation as they struggle against their lives’ constrictions, but they also tend to overexaggerate their characters’ tics in the name of humor.

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Act Two discovers that something is literally rotten in the state of Colorado but despite some grisly slapstick, the play’s themes prove a little too shallow. Tracey’s repellent behavior becomes a convenient excuse for the family’s miserable lives, letting the others off the hook too easily. While I suspect the playhouse would rather skewer the ideal of airheaded beauty contests (like the now notorious contestant from South Carolina), we’re more likely to recall the kind of prominent missing-persons cases that are no laughing matters.

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In 2004, Synchronicity Performance Group staged Be Aggressive, which used dark comedy to explore similar notions of suburban Americana and feminine ideals (cheerleading, as opposed to Colorado’s pageantry). Where Be Aggressive offered an expansive vision of American emptiness, Colorado presents more predictable jabs at ambition and beauty-obsessed superficiality. And best, it’s just a runner-up.

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Colorado. Through Oct. 20. $12-$22. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m. Dad’s Garage Theatre, 280 Elizabeth St. 404-523-3141. www.dadsgarage.com.