A bifurcated family dealing with mental illness and addiction becomes an actors' tour-de –force in Redtwist Theatre's world premiere of Erik Gernand's The Beautiful Dark which explores how familial relationships can strengthen and collapse under the pressure of protecting the one from the many.
A true ensemble piece, Mr. Gernand's timely play is a psychologically manipulative piece of storytelling. As the play opens we find that Jacob (Aaron Kirby) has been kicked out of college on the pretense of having bad grades. However, from the moment we meet him, it is clear that there is a very dark nature at work inside his mind. His mother, Nancy (Jacqueline Grandt), a recovering alcoholic, is trying to keep together what is left of her family after divorcing her police officer hubby, Tom (Tommy Lee Johnston) and raising her youngest boy, Charlie (Jacob Bond), who has always looked up to his older brother.
As the play unfurls, each of the characters become not who they seem, or maybe who we want them to be. Each, at some point, exists to manipulate the surroundings of the other with the result being a riveting exploration of what the families who bore mass murders had to be cope with.
