Ready to rumble

Sensurround Stagings, one of Atlanta’s newest theaters, takes its name from the cinematic gimmick of the 1970s in which deafening, seat-shaking rumbles would accompany key scenes from movies like Earthquake and Midway, to make the audience feel like participants in the action. In a different way, the viewing environment replicates the content of Briar Patch, the inaugural production of Sensurround Stagings’ 2000-2001 season. Its performance space, in the Cabbagetown studio/gallery space called Art Farm, has no central air conditioning, so the audience feels the heat of the play’s setting in rural Virginia. Plus, the junky props of the white-trash setting so fit the shabby space, at times you feel less like you’re watching a play than you’ve walked in on a group of squabbling squatters.

Seeing passionate young actors tackling work in untraditional spaces can often have the charge of guerrilla theater, which is Briar Patch’s best selling point. Deborah Pryor’s play proves an often florid mix of brutality, country condescension and pretentiousness, and the grating qualities often subsume the play’s effectively chilling or lyrical moments.

Vivacious Inez (Barbara Cole) chafes at her life married to overbearing Edgar (Andrew Davis), a petty criminal and incompetent grower of backyard marijuana. His slow-witted sidekick Flowers (Brit Whittle) has an unseemly fixation on her, but Edgar opts to trust his buddy and abuse his wife, on whom he keeps a close watch.

While there’s no justification for Edgar’s vicious, tyrannical behavior, his suspicions are well-founded. Apart from visiting her friend Butcher Ann (lively Mary Kraft), a “semi-professional spiritual advisor,” Inez has been having a secret affair with Druden (Scott Poythress), courthouse lawyer and scion of a wealthy family. In time, Druden promises to whisk Inez away to Richmond, but despite Butcher Ann’s advice to get out of her marriage, Inez knows escaping Edgar won’t be that easy.

The play’s first half is filled with scenes of menace, battery and female degradation. The violence continues in Act 2, and director Aileen Loy offers an artful, cinematically staged murder that cross-cuts with Butcher Lee and Druden in their respective homes. But generally the second half is surprisingly lighter than the first.

Pryor inflates the schemes and double-dealing in the plot with Shakespearean parallels. Katheryn Hunter plays Officer “Avon” (as in “Stratford-on-“), the name “Edgar” and the images of flowers and blindness evoke King Lear, and like Macbeth, the play has a soothsaying “witch.” And in case those touches were too subtle, Inez and Edgar’s last name is “Macbeth.” The costume choices can slip into Sam Shepard territory, such as Inez’ second act eye patch, Flowers’ animal-shaped oven mitts and Druden’s bizarre choice to wear red long johns, a blue blazer and slippers in public in one scene.

Briar Patch mostly emphasizes the idea that rustic folk are criminal, superstitious birdbrains, wont to guzzle Milwaukee’s Best and read supermarket tabloids. Inez wears a T-shirt with a “Spam” logo, but at one point admits, “I didn’t even know that Spam wasn’t a real animal until last week!” It’s the kind of approach that assumes that poor people are naturally disposed to behavioral extremes.

But Cole is nicely cast in her role. The recent Emory graduate is quickly becoming one of Atlanta’s most affecting and naturalistic young actresses. With a little more experience, she’ll be better able to modulate her histrionics, but she’s often quite moving, whether conveying wrenching despair or coquettish coyness.

I’m not sure what to make of Whittle’s Flowers, a role that seems older than the actor (he knew Inez’ larcenous, moonshining grandfather, even though she did not). Initially he’s a creepy stalker who’d be at home in Deliverance, but he becomes improbably chivalrous as the play goes along, and Whittle’s performance doesn’t reconcile the contradictions.

As despicable Edgar, Davis shows some insightful instances, suggesting the character’s frustration with his uncontrollable rage. Mostly the actor sustains the role’s loudest notes, which proves an advantage in the Art Farm space. The facility’s problem is not so much a matter of temperature (although the heat certainly doesn’t make the play seem any shorter) as acoustics. Since it wasn’t designed for theatrical performances, when the fans are going it becomes difficult to hear the low-talking actors like Hunter, especially as they get farther away from where you happen to be sitting.

Next month will feature a second Sensurround staging, as Mike Katinsky’s “lost Elvis movie” Viva Los Alamos ... in 3-D (which debuted last summer) will have two performances at Dad’s Garage Aug. 11-12 before being presented at New York’s Fringe Festival. Briar Patch can be an irksome, wearying work, but with it and Viva Los Alamos, the new troupe has boldly announced its presence in the Atlanta theater scene. Sensurround Stagings is ready to rumble.

Briar Patch plays through Aug. 19 at the Art Farm, 835 Wylie St., at 8 p.m. Thurs.-Sat. and 5 p.m. Sun. $10-$12. 404-524-0302.