Catastrophic Theatre’s ANNA BELLA EEMA earns Buzz’ Three B Rating: Brilliant Playwrighting, Direction, Performances

When we walked into the theatre at DiverseWorks to see The Catastrophic Theatre's Anna Bella Eema on Saturday evening, there was already theatre happening onstage.

My thoughts jumped to the three witches in Macbeth at first, for through the smoke and the dimly lit set, three earthy women sat and were busy arranging and rearranging things on TV tables in front of them as if they were finding things to throw into their cauldron of spells.

The "things" these three women were arranging were raw instruments that were obviously to be used in the performance that was soon to follow.

The Macbeth comparison quickly came and went and I flashed to the primordial days on earth when civilizations had been matriarchal before fearful men stomped out the feminine fertility goddesses with their patriarchies, when women goddesses sat around a campfire in the forest and told stories to each other with perhaps younger women sitting beyond their perimeter listening to their enlightening storytelling.

This is truly the feel of Lisa D'Amour's brilliant play, Anna Bella Eema.

We realize that theatre is truly the last bastion for great storytelling as the three women participate in the ancient art of storytelling.

Lisa D'Amour's writing is all at once poetic, engaging, symbolic, real, surreal, gentle, manic, mythical, magical, mysterious, mystical.

The stories that the three women relate to us are full of imagery, always disturbing and in-your-face, bloated with blurred boundaries that are always disturbing, mesmerizing, and haunting.

We are tempted to look away at times but we cannot.

Each woman looks out to a fixed point in the theatre and never wavers from that precise point of concentration and intensity.

The women talk to the audience about life in and around a trailer, a social worker's visit, the construction of a highway and the lives of wolves, owls, vampires.

They turn into other characters, like Jessica Janes' memorable Frankenstein's monster ''disguised as a police officer.''

Sometimes the women flawlessly sing hauntingly beautiful a capella music that has been masterfully crafted by Chris Sidorfsky.

The women are so in tune with one another that they become one voice powerfully thrusting us toward the next theatrical threshold.

Early in the play, the three women proclaim in unison:  ''To be more than another set of bones wandering across the earth is to realize that you are just another set of bones wandering across the earth.''

Lisa D'Amour's play seems to be about the ways we have become separated from society and the creatively strange, paranoid, and twisted energies that emerge in us as the result of that separation.

I have just returned from my twice a year Broadway marathon where I saw seven Broadway shows.

I am proud to say that The Catastrophic Theatre's Anna Bella Eema is as good as anything I saw on Broadway, from brilliant performances by three of the most talented actresses working on the stage today, Elissa Levitt, Ivy Castle, and Jessica Janes, to brilliant direction by Jason Nodler, toLisa D'Amour's riveting and brilliant script, to brilliant lighting design by Kevin Holden, to brilliant set design and props by Jodi Bobrovsky.

This is truly one of the best productions of the Fall theatre season in Houston.

This cast exemplifies the most dynamic and brilliant ensemble work of recent memory.

Elissa Levitt as One

Photo by Anthony Rathbun

Elissa Levitt as One is maniacally methodical and mesmerizing as the young mother who makes her living licking stamps and has never left her trailer.

Acting just doesn't get any better than this as she runs the gamut of her imagination gone wild.

Ms. Levitt's intensity is mind blowing, disarming, sensuously scintillating, and she possesses the prowess of a wolf stalking its prey.

Ivy Castle as Two

Photo by Anthony Rathbun

Ivy Castle as Two, One's daughter, so precisely captures the presence of this 10-year-old girl that we willingly go with her on the most alluring adventure in the play, which takes place in the strange dark world beneath the trailer.

I am convinced that there is no role in the hands of the extremely versatile Ms. Castle that does not become a masterpiece of theatrical genius.

Jessica Janes as Three

Photo by Anthony Rathbun

Jessica Janes as Three is scrupulously stunning, adeptly auspicious, and movingly momentous from the moment she brilliantly captures the mute title character to her hilariously haggard portrayal of The Policeman.

I have watched Jessica Janes' stage career blossom and grow into a garden of earthly delights over the past three years.

Ms. Janes is certainly on path of greatness as she conquers yet another role with striking prestige, prominence, and notable significance.

Without the right director, Anna Bella Eema could certainly have fallen flat.

You Tube is full of misunderstood, misconstrued, and misguided Anna Bella Eema hopefuls.

Luckily for us, Catastrophic founder and artistic director Jason Nodler understands the discourse of avant garde theatre and gives us a brightly shining jewel that will forever stay with us to light our journey into the heart of theatre as long as we live.

Mr. Nodler's direction is nothing short of magnificent, always reaching beyond our comfort zones and taking us to that most sublime place of enlightenment where only a handful of directors have arrived.

Kevin Holden's lighting design is so spookily sublime and stirringly surreal and happens on so many different levels of radiant luminescence that I thought I had fallen into another dimension.

Jodi Bobrovsky's simple raked set completely covered with black/grey wrinkled canvas is so simple, it is complexly thrusting, spilling, and rushing towards us like the mighty raging river of the great unknown, terrifying unconscious.

I guarantee that Catastrophic's Anna Bella Eema well may be the most insanely intense, ingenious, illustrious, illuminating, enlightening ninety-minute theatre experience you will ever have!