‘Athena’ @ Undermain Theatre
Show photos by Paul Semrad
—Martha Heimberg
A swashbuckling sword fight you can find in an old pirate movie. Way too sloppy and ridiculously fatal for the two fiercely competitive teenagers in the swank New York City Fencing Club, training hard for a spot on the Junior Olympics team. Advance, parry, touch. Point won. Scream! No, wait. Screaming is super crude and rude to your opponent, right? But what if it feels fantastic and helps you win?
Undermain Theatre opens its 41st season with the regional premiere of Gracie Gardner’s Athena, a rigorously physical, emotionally exhilarating 80-minute lesson in the exquisite art of fencing and the intense pressure of surviving high school, hapless parenting, and getting into the right college. Two scrappy Gen Z girls bring all their lit smarts, street sarcasm, and unspoken need for friendship to the fencing platform, in Robert Winn’s clean white set design built around Undermain’s challenging concrete columns.
Director Bruce DuBose handles the play’s chatty zingers with fine comic pacing, and Sara J. Romersberger’s deft fight choreography (with Silas Choi’s fencing instruction) matches the blades and words to the ritual dance of an old sport enlivened with fresh blood. (Note: No real blood is shed, of course, in this tidy match of electronic touch scoring.) Still, when these two young women go at it in this intimate setting (in handsome authentic costumes/masks from Katelyn Jackson), the tension rises with each stab.
In the darkened theater we hear the pulsating music and the rhythmic click of blades tapping in Paul Semrad’s immersive surround-sound design. Then a scream. When the lights go up, we see that Athena (whip-thin, steely-eyed Nadia DeWolf; “Athena” is her fencing name) has just beaten Mary Wallace (yoga-limber, calmly determined Christina Cranshaw) in the Women’s Fencing League club playoffs, and the properly coached Mary is affronted. Not only did she lose to a ballsy screamer, but now Athena also wants her to become her daily training partner. Opposites attract, and these two make a match—and a fascinating play—of their sparring sessions, as they work together toward the next round of competition.
Masks down and voices up as they touch blades each day, the two gradually touch on aspects of their separate lives. Urban-cool Athena lives with her grumpy father in a New York City apartment. Her mother took off when she was a baby and never came back. “I tell him it’s not my fault you forgot to wear a condom,” she says. Semrad’s imaginative sound design includes a man’s voice responding, the words blurred so we hear only the annoyed tone.
Between scenes, the actors strip to commuting clothes, and we see DeWolf’s Athena in her hard mascara and carved red lipstick, as she establishes her city-tough persona, scorning the insane idea of a relationship with a guy and bragging about having fast, anonymous sex on the subway. Back in her mask, she scores her “signature move” against Mary Wallace—and screams.
Mary Wallace lives in a nice home surrounded by woodlands, and takes the train into the city for fencing lessons. She retorts that Athena’s over-the-top feminism is “so second wave.” She says she’s grateful to her mother for carrying her nine months, and loves her parents very much. She’s totally into studying every night to be a marine biologist, and can’t wait get to the ocean where all life came from. Stuff like that. Cranshaw’s rich girl Mary Wallace is plenty tough, however. When Athena says she “lifts,” Mary replies she works out on the backyard trampoline. Even in the snow and ice. So there.
Winn’s set includes a huge projection screen behind each actor that magically reveals equipment at the fencing club, and takes us into Athena’s wreck of a bedroom and Mary Wallace’s ordered abode. When the girls go into the city and dance at a bar, the flashy nightclub scene appears behind them, while they dance as furiously as they fence. (Video by Winn and Rob Menzel.) Lighting designer Steve Woods cools the white set to near blue when things become frosty between the girls, and warms everything up to sunny daylight when they begin to talk about their favorite fast food and hot bands. Both agree that making the fencing team is a good way to get into one’s college of choice. Model student Mary says she expects to be “recruited” in any case; no need to go through the regurlar application process.
As they compete at practice and draw closer as friends, the coming regional meet looms larger every day. And here’s where the metal meets the mettle. How do good friends compete full-out and respectfully with each other? I was watching the final matches of the U.S. Open women’s competition when I saw the play. Good friends on the tennis tour must play each other week after week. After their match, a third fencer (Lily Gast) stands before the winner, and it may be time to give that signature move a new twist. Commentators speak of “killer instinct,” and we see and feel it here.
What a delight to watch the physical discipline and mental toughness it takes to compete at this level. Athena brings the joy and pressure of sporting competition to the stage in a funny, perceptive play that’s literally moving, both as a drama and a dance. Go to the match.
WHEN: September 5-29, 2024
WHERE: 3200 Main Street, Dallas
WEB: undermain.org
