Review: Apocalyptic ‘Ragweeds’ at LakehouseRanch is oddly intriguing

A golden stag shirtless in gold boxer shorts. A female Mothman pauses at one point because she needs to pick her kids up for soccer practice. A doctoral student from Yale in search of the folklorish Mothman in the mountains of West Virginia, and a woman who has never left the bunker she shared with her father before his death. Looming just outside her door is a creeper vine, where human contact with it leads to certain death.

This is the world of “Ragweeds,” Riley Elton McCarthy’s doomsday dramedy making its world premiere at LakehouseRanchDotPNG at Main Street Playhouse through Sunday, Oct. 12.

The New York-based McCarthy is one of four resident playwrights at LakehouseRanch. Last season, their play “rabbit” made its premiere at LakehouseRanchDotPNG, which shared some of the same themes of “Ragweeds”: People and other things living in an apocalyptic world and questioning their existence.

McCarthy first introduces the audience to the Stag (riotously played with complete abandon by Richard Lewis). He instructs everyone to “buck on up and settle down, because we’re in the Appalachians, part’ners.” The Stag is on the verge of discoveries since it reveals it is a newborn. Pondering the meaning of it all, the Stag questions gender – it may want to be a stag today but tomorrow it may feel like it wants to be a doe. Maybe the stag was reincarnated, he thinks aloud. “Have I experienced love? Loss? Life?

The questions set the tone for what’s to come, a variety of ponderous notions from each character in “Ragweeds.”

Enter Ivy (Jessica Calle) filled with naivete and a single purpose: To find Mothman to show her parents that she is somehow worthy of praise. Cryptozoology, you see, is proving that entities that have existed as legends really do exist. She’ll be the first Ph.D. cryptozoologist ever. Mothman, by the way, is a real folklore legend. So much so that there is a statue in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, of the creature that was supposedly spotted by multiple residents, described as 7 feet tall with a human body and a 10-foot-wide wingspan. The character Ivy tells the story of the gravediggers who first saw Mothman, so the audience is filled in on the real lore. “It was 1966. . . All of a sudden, they see something on the hill, looming next to a tall gravestone with beady red eyes. . . “

Hazel (Sara Jarrell) whose lived on the mountain her entire life, says she’s never heard of Mothman, but she does have her own deity that she’s created a shrine for in a corner of the bunker home. Everyone in the story is trying to believe in something.

Then there’s Mothman (played by Mairi Chanel) who takes a shine to the Stag.

While it all sounds confusing, it makes for an entertaining and certainly original 90 minutes.

First-time director Emalie Belokon helps everyone make sense of it all and with the Stag’s many interjecting monologues McCarthy has assigned to the character and the revealing of the other two main characters’ wishes and desires, the absurdist play does come together realistically.

Hazel says she likes rules and structure; Ivy likes “a little rebellion.”

Jarrell as the jaded and angry Hazel plays a wonderful counter to Calle’s chirpy and inquisitive Ivy. The two take advantage of McCarthy’s dialogue that allows the audience to get to know them as they introduce themselves to one another; with their realizations of how they’ve arrived where they are now, both in the physical space and in this time in their lives.

Hazel preserves everything in the space just as her father left it. Books on shelves with dried ragweed in between the pages aren’t to be touched.

Jarrell, who just came off directing Main Street Players “Ms. Homes and Ms. Watson Apt 2B,” brings out the loneliness and hurt in the character. “Why is every song about love? Or drinking?,” the character asks. Hazel has lost everyone she loves, she says, and now she’s waiting for the end of the world her father predicted – a sunset – a big burning ball of brilliance and the creepers who will take over.

As for Calle, the recent grad of Barry University’s theater program could have fallen into a trap of playing Ivy as a Pollyanna – the positive yin to Jarrell’s negative yang, but the actress finds depth as the play unravels when she talks about the loneliness she felt growing up with parents who, while they provided for her physically, were emotionally absent.

The script calls for the two women to become attracted to each other sexually and while they have symbiosis as friends, the budding love seems less believable. There wasn’t much of a buildup and the moment of realization happened quickly. With more exploration by the actors and their director into why the two find themselves drawn to each other, it would make for more poignancy when it matters at the play’s end.

Belokon in her direction is able, to her credit, to keep two different stories afloat – the giddy stag with his wants and wishes and the elusive Mothman that appears and disappears. Chanel has little to say as the Mothman but her body language speaks volumes.

At times, it is hard to decipher when the girls have ventured out as there isn’t a clear demarcation from the inside of the bunker and into the woods. It is a small stage, so perhaps this is a difficulty with space and the set design. Artistic Director Brandon Urrutia created the set, which captures the essence of an Appalachian cabin – knickknacks on shelves, a worn couch, a portrait covered in a sheet, which is unveiled toward the end of the play.

The Stag stands on a patch of green turf downstage. With such a wild personality, it would have been better if the director gave him more movement rather than delivering speeches mostly planted in one spot.

The Stag, with his moments of self-deprecating humor and Lewis reveling in them is comic gold. “Hi, it’s me, the golden stag, I don’t really feel like monologuing. . I know you were looking forward to a monologue from me, so this comes as big bummer.” He describes symptoms of COVID-19, while never really saying that’s what he’s suffering from.

Costumes by Erin Proctor are perfectly executed and have plenty of range from the Mothman’s tight black dominatrix leotard and the Stag’s glittery face and shorts to mountain wear that suits the girls’ personalities – Ivy in a jean vest at one point with flowers; Hazel always in earthy colors.

Charisma Jolly’s lighting design goes from bright for the newborn stag to brown hues for the bunker and the forest, a golden glow for the stag and then the realistic tones for the mountain indoors and out.

The author of “Ragweed” knew what they were going for with this play and LakeHouseRanchDotPNG gets it. McCarthy says in their author’s note at the beginning of the script: “there is something weirdly comforting at the end of it all.”

That’s how it feels at the end of the production.

One side note, however. As soon as the lights go out, it’s lights up, and the actors are already taking bows. How about some time to digest everything that we’ve just consumed? Lights down for a beat or two or three – let the audience digest it all; stew for a minute.

Yes, this would be the polished finish to the rest of McCarthy’s author’s note: “beautiful things grow out of loss here” — that we could just ponder the existentialist meanings of the play for a moment had we been left in the dark just a little bit longer.

If you go:

WHAT: Riley Elton McCarthy’s “Ragweeds”

WHERE: Main Street Playhouse, 6812 Main St., Miami Lakes

WHEN: 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through Sunday, Oct. 13.

COST: $20.

INFORMATION : 786-427-4721 and lakehouseranchdotpng.com

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