Twilight Bowl, a new play by Rebecca Gilman

Or: Bumpers Down

In the small town of Reynolds Wisconsin, the home of many of Rebecca’ Gilman’s stories, there sits a bowling ally; Twilight Bowl. Sometimes, after hours, a group of sometimes friends comes to hang: champion bowler and College hopeful Sam (Becca Savoy), her caustic cousin Jaycee (Heather Chrisler), professional goat-getter Clarice (Hayley Burgess), super christian Sharlene (Anne Thompson), and even-keel bartender Brielle (Mary Taylor). They come to drink, eat cake, commiserate, light the wicks of old stories and give each other the much lacking gift of time and attention. These are there stories (ding ding).

Gilman wrote Twilight Bowl originally for young women starting off into the world of self sufficiency, BUAUMFU. But it is also a warm and gooey slice of the side of a warn and rusty America not often seen (or at least, not treated fairly) on stages. There’s plenty of angst, self doubt, and revelations going around here as any Manhattan high-rise, but here it’s expressed principally in terms of jobs, scholarships, and parole hearings. It also focuses entirely upon the girls at hand, there’s no driving conflict, just scenes of the girls on the red pleather seats that might be separated by minutes or moths or even years.

We are also treated to see all sorts acting styles. There’s the straightforward presence of Taylor who never shows too much but whose timing and side expressions are brilliantly point. Then there’s Maddy (Angela Morris) a spoilt Evanstonian who decides to come to Reynolds with Sam one thanksgiving: a condensed vapor of vapidity and selfishness that is so superbly repellent. And Thompson who keeps Charlene’s squeaky clean but anguished thoughts alive and instantly readable on her face and in her hands, but still has us guessing if she loves her friends (as she often says and indisputably does) because she values them or because J-sus told her to.

The show moves on its repartee: not the zinging kind but the ones that give a good solid “mock” when they’re sent and received and lobbed back. But more than its abundant cleverness Gilman introduces us to these girls, who in other hands and other stories might be mere props, at their best and at their worst. They’re kindnesses and regrets and rages and spiteful jags are what make them human, and throughout the evening we get to see all of their pins go down.