Review: Outrageous 'Natural Selection'
'Selection' has plenty of wacky humor,
but some elements don't ring true
JULIE YORK COPPENS

"Natural Selection" is a strange play. We realize this long before the anthropological theme-park curator, the blog-obsessed Wal-Mart associate and the kidnapped Mexican shepherd smear themselves with hot sloppy joe meat and start having sex.

Not every moment in Actor's Theatre of Charlotte's production matches the Manwich orgy for outrageous comedy. Most of the artists behind "Natural Selection," including 30-something playwright Eric Coble, are still refining their craft, so the show occasionally falters. When it flies, though, what fun.

Coble imagines a near-futuristic, environmentally ravaged America where it's no longer safe to venture outdoors. Human contact is confined to the Internet. Vanishing indigenous groups are stuck in the simulated habitats of Culture Fiesta, a high-end tourist trap whose human exhibits keep dying off. And Armageddon is on the way.

Joseph Klosek plays Henry Carson, a hapless ethnologist whose hard-driving Culture Fiesta supervisor (the reliable comedian Tanya McClellan) sends him out into the wild to nab a Native American. The specimen Henry brings home doesn't fit the bill: He's a drifter of mixed heritage and possible mythic powers, appealingly played by Jeremy DeCarlos. But he proves an educational addition to the park, particularly for Henry and his Web-bound family.

Veteran director Mark Sutch, of Davidson College, has put his youthful cast on a roller-coaster of action, so far as Coble's cell phone- and laptop-dependent script allows. (In two mad supporting roles, actor Brett Gentile is a one-man thrill ride.) Sutch's staging is energetic, efficient and smart; he understands the ideas behind Coble's gags and wastes no time on scene changes.

Sutch hasn't, however, coaxed honest performances from all of his actors -- and goofy as it is, "Natural Selection" needs grounding in human truth. As Henry's wife, Suzie, Caroline Renfro obeys the blogger's imperative to "keep it real"; but Klosek does not. Only now and then do we buy the curator's yearning for a non-theoretical life. Klosek's interplay with Renfro, though, feels right.

The director is hamstrung, too, by Chip Decker's set, an overly literal and ugly representation of a society forced underground by its own foibles. High platforms limit actors' movements and complicate entrances; the scrim behind offers none of the hurricane-blown spectacle Coble's climax needs.

Other production elements are less than inspired, though Donna Conrad's costume for Gentile, as head of a competing Orlando attraction -- business suit, crash helmet and protective pads -- is worth a chuckle. Even the show's exit music (by R.E.M.) is a too-obvious, too-ordinary choice for a mutant comedy like "Natural Selection." REVIEW

Natural Selection

Vanishing cultures collide in Eric Coble's zany comedy. About 2 hours.

WHEN: 8 tonight and Saturday; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday (pay-what-you-can) and Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; through June 30.

WHERE: Actor's Theatre of Charlotte, 650 E. Stonewall St. ADMISSION:

$23-28.

DETAILS: 704-342-2251; or www.actorstheatre charlotte.org.