Take Me Away

A new play by Heidi Kraay

Or: Personal Savior

Tale as old as time, true as it can be, somebody falls for someone they shouldn’t. She (Mia Raymes) lives in Boise, not alone but lonely, protected and preyed upon by her unseen Monster (a recurring color of Kraay’s galaxy wide palette). Bounding into her life is He (Nick Garica) a much older, highly charismatic man who claims he can speak to G-d. With a monster of his own looming at his shoulder He wants She at his side, in his bed, sharing his dream as he takes his dreams on the road. And She, against all good sense, but with an awful inevitability, climbs aboard.

Both characters (and their monsters) stack the story through Kraay’s poetry, lush, spinning visual images, trading innuendos and little shards of promises one to the other. The dialog forms two prose poems smushed together; her despair, which Raymes flips and then deepens, and his utter belief in himself. Garcia, though his character is draped in red flags, still manages the quiet heaven-sent charisma. We are treated to not just a monster, but sometimes a man, who for seconds at a time convinces even the audience that perhaps his intentions, at least, are pure, before our better judgment reasserts itself and we mutter “Aw, you sick b*stard, you had me for a split-second, G-d d-mmit!”

Take Me Away is by no means enjoyable but it is very, very good. The worsening of his situation, was, at least for me, dear reader, like eating fifteen lemons, wedge by wedge, one after another. By the end my lips were behind my teeth, and my stomach was a’roil, but I certainly want’t bored. Moreover is important to see stories of why so many smart, talented capable people can be dragged down into the abyss by a one-man cult, and moreover it’s important to look unflinchingly at the machinery that makes a man a monster.