Review: Hillcountry Underbelly in The Vortex Yard [Theater]

Hillcountry Underbelly: A Pilgrimage on the Outskirts, a new musical by Elizabeth Doss, presented by Paper Chairs, might be initially perceived as your classic, charming and whimsical country bumpkin tale. Complete with references to Ma and Pa and beautiful ballads (composed by Mark Stewart) about big old red dogs and scorpions. However, as the title implies, the Underbelly is anything but light-hearted. After scratching the surface, there lies a dark comedy of desperation, death, illness, and a struggle between allegiance to a patriarch and individual desire that eventually rip the family apart.

The play opens with six country children, three brothers and three sisters, newly orphaned by a seemingly tyrannical father on their Texas Hill Country land. They are dirty, ill-educated and scared. Most importantly, they are directionless in the absence of their father. That is until a vision by the youngest son sends them on a pilgrimage to a church to escape an impending flood. There are many obstacles that stand in their way, including the struggle of power between the elder and the younger children, eventually leading to some family members leaving the group entirely. However, nothing proves to be a larger block to the mission set by their father than what the remaining members eventually fall upon - modern civilization.

The themes of this piece are incredibly ambitious. Dedication to religion (or a “father”) versus dedication to modern conveniences like Bed Bath & Beyond and football games on Sunday. There are questions of life and death and purpose in general, displayed by the various paths the children end up choosing along their journey. Some buy an SUV, one becomes a drunken Austin singer-songwriter, and another sinks into the earth and becomes a tree, giving birth to an inexplicable tree baby. However it is the youngest son who stays true to his journey and eventually does find the church. It is somewhat unclear which of these paths the writer most identifies with, but the effect is profound.

The themes of a clash between nature and civilization in the piece are ingeniously played in the outdoor space of The Vortex Yard. The sounds of planes flying overhead and cars whizzing down Manor Road while the wind blows across the stage seem almost written into the script, as do the twisting path platforms that serve as performances spaces (designed by Lisa Laratta).The actors stayed true to their extremely country stylized accents and characters, creating poignant and juxtaposing caricatures of the deeper emblems their place in the family and destinies within the play represented.

Overall, Hillcountry Underbelly, under the direction of Dustin Wills and Keri Boyd, is a thought-provoking albeit heady piece. Some of the ideas are a bit convoluted (it could be easy to get lost pondering the biblical references), but in another way, the piece poses a new way to view truth in art as we know it. In the play, Pa (Robert Pierson) says,” this is no path to truth, only a path to what is already known.” As if to say, if this play were a paradigm for life, like the pilgrimage of the children, maybe there is no grander truth to found, there is only a passage from ignorance to understanding.