If you're at all familiar with the large ensemble plays of Lanford Wilson, you'll find comparisons to Lisa D'Amour's "Airline Highway.” There are also echoes of Tennessee Williams' blue lyricism. And if "Airline Highway" doesn't rise to the level of those lauded works, MTC is giving this Steppenwolf play a splendid production, courtesy of director Joe Mantello and a thoroughly winning cast.
Winning performances in what many would regard as a subculture of losers. That is, denizens of the rundown Hummingbird Motel in New Orleans. By hook or crook, they are helpless, hopeful souls – society’s dropouts who've found in each other a community united by their love for Miss Ruby, a free-spirited strip club owner who espouses the belief that one must live for personal pleasure.
The plot centers on Miss Ruby's imminent death and her wish to experience her own funeral. In true New Orleans style, they throw a wild party that turns ugly amid too much drinking and drugs.
The play feels long, in part because it is essentially a portrait of these characters living in an all too real world, in which there's a huge price to pay for disengagement. Nothing really changes from day to day; and as honestly rendered as this is, the dead-end dreariness of it all can feel wearisome.
Scott Pask's parking lot design is the ideal setting for Mantello's expert staging - with overlapping scenes and dialogue - creating a gripping sense of life's messiness. In addition, it showcases some of the finest ensemble performances ever seen on this stage. A special mention to Julie White, digging deep into this hooker’s heart of gold, and K. Todd Freeman as a straight talking drag queen.
"Airline Highway" takes its place among a host of existential works. Extremely thoughtful and poetic, it provides perspective but little new insight on a world that one character describes as "no B.S., no pretending, no exit.”