Take Me Back
Opening Night: March 12, 2014
Closing: March 22, 2014
Theater: Walkerspace
After a four-year stint in federal prison, Bill is back at home, living with his diabetic Mom and looking for a way out of Oklahoma. But today’s America doesn’t give a guy like Bill many options. How far is he willing to go to change his fortune? With a dose of melancholic nostalgia infused with dark humor, Take Me Back examines the impossibility of the American dream when surrounded by nothing but minimum wage Big Box stores and chain restaurants.
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March 7, 2014
Whatever negatives it has, there is value in Emily Schwend’s Take Me Back, a by-the-numbers story told in a clever algorithm. Granted, the play is thick with cliché and riddled with exposition, but it does boast a tidy narrative do-si-do, a dramaturgical gimmick that allows us to first see a scene and only later understand it.
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March 9, 2014
Take Me Back is a jewel of a production. Housed in downtown Walkerspace, this darkly humorous new play by Emily Schwend has been beautifully realized by the actors and supported by an obviously gifted director (Jay Stull), with a meticulously conceived set and sound design. This 90-minute play successfully deals with layers of family and social dysfunction in an Oklahoma town by using well-written southern humor and heartfelt revelation to reveal, among other things, how heartbreaking not being able to change or grow can be.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 7, 2014
A young man’s life unravels over the course of a single day in Take Me Back, by Emily Schwend, who should be added to your list of names to remember. We are in a kitchen in Muskogee, Oklahoma, belonging to Sue, a school lunch worker in late middle age. Sue is a diabetic, but she can’t be bothered to take care of herself; instead, she prefers to while away the day on the couch, soaking up whatever the Game Show Network has to offer and gorging on the candies she has hidden around the house. Her adult son, Bill, attends to her in near-saintly fashion — shopping for healthy groceries, reminding her that sugar-free cookies are not a good choice, and nudging her to check her blood sugar once a day.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 7, 2014
Thomas Wolf said in Look Homeward Angel, that one can never really go home again. This is particularly true for those who have established themselves in careers and have become successful. Not only have they picked themselves up and replanted roots in an environment where they can flourish, they are often loath to associate with their origins especially if the memories are unhappy ones. But what happens to those who have no where else to go? Home isn’t always the place where they have to take you in.
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March 9, 2014
The word “good” comes up often in Emily Schwend’s incisive Take Me Back, now at Walkerspace, almost always when applied to Bill (James Kautz), an ex-convict living with his mother, Sue (Charlotte Booker), in Muskogee, Okla. She believes in him; after all, he grudgingly dotes on her, urging her to pursue a healthier diet. His high school sweetheart, Julie (Boo Killebrew), has faith in him, too. Married now but disillusioned with her husband, she’s up from Garland, Tex., for her brother’s wedding, and susceptible to the passion that once possessed her and Bill. But Casey (Jay Eisenberg), a young thief, says Bill can never amount to anything good. And she has her reasons as well: Much of Take Me Back hinges on his past and whether he is capable of not repeating it. But mostly this production is about complex emotions coursing under seemingly simple lives.
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