Don't Drown

Don't Drown

Running time: 1 hr, 20 min

Judy Garland, late in life, secluded in a London hotel room. Mary Shelley carrying the heart of her dead husband Percy. The sole survivor of a global plague recording his grim history. The monster made by Victor Frankenstein pleading with his creator to build him a mate. Fred Astaire dancing sans partner on the walls and ceiling of a stateroom in Royal Wedding. Renfield, in thrall to Dracula, begging for release from the madhouse.

A wildly incongruous band, to be sure, and yet they sit cheek by jowl in Rebecca Beegle's play Don't Drown. A fantasy version of The Judy Garland Show has the star welcoming the author of Frankenstein onto the program to talk about her 1826 novel The Last Man, in which a 21st-century plague wipes out all but one member of the human race. In the course of the show, Judy quizzes her guest about her life and performs "That's Entertainment!," the shades of Shelley's husband and father – social theorist William Godwin – materialize, and they perform scenes from The Last Man, Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Percy Shelley's The Cenci (this last with hand puppets), as well as re-create an interview with Fred Astaire about his gravity-defying solo in Royal Wedding.

As surreal and nonsensical as all this sounds – and feels as you watch it – there's a method to Beegle's madness that reveals itself as the play progresses. Each question, each anecdote, each literary excerpt, each shot of hooch that Judy downs between bits, adds to our sense of the isolation felt by these characters. They're all, in some way, cut off from the rest of humanity and suffering in their aloneness. Judy and Mary are center stage in this, literally and figuratively, and as we hear Judy grill Mary about the deaths of her mother, husband, and children, or rail about her own rejection by Hollywood, they become strange mirror images of each other: one a prim, reserved portrait of Romantic-era rectitude, the other a glitzy, showy, neurotic product of 20th-century showbiz, but both soaked in loss, misery, and loneliness. Their shared tragedy is that they have survived.

With the play's ambitious blend of drama, camp, musical numbers, straight Gothic melodrama, campy Gothic melodrama, and more, a first production would be hard-pressed to nail every style or shift in tone. And a bare-bones effort like this Rude Mechs Second Stage production can't be expected to deliver the elaborate design that would steep us in the worlds of an early Sixties variety show and 19th-century Romanticism. But the production elements are sufficient to establish this unique environment, and director Joanna Garfinkel and her cast succeed in animating the show's bizarre mix of personalities with feeling and clarity.

More remarkably, this production at times captures Beegle's complex emotional portraits with precision and style. Chris Doubek brings a somber resignation to the role of Lionel, the novel's "last man," and the ever-reliable Robert Newell shifts smoothly from effete Percy to elegant Astaire to gruff monster. Then there is Yasmin Kittles, who shoulders the greatest burden as Judy and carries it with grace. In a sequined top and black slacks, she is glittery and jittery, her mastery of late-Garland era moves – the compulsive patting down of hair; the one-hand-on-hip, one-dangling-by-side stance; the slightly slurred speech – exposing the nervous edge of Judy in decline. She embraces Garland's insecurity and pain, communicating to us the years of isolation with waves of loneliness washing over her.

With considerable imagination, Rebecca Beegle shows us how easy it is to sink under those waves. But she does not leave us without hope. Her ending, like her title, is an injunction not to give in, not to lose oneself in the blue fathoms of despair.