Sophie Gets the Horns

Riot Group’s new play Sophie Gets the Horns was almost, in the words of Winston Churchill, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” But, unlike a swelling super-power breathing huskily down the neck of a continent breaking out in war, Sophie Gets the Horns lacks any necessarily compelling quality, unless it’s the force of the acting. But good actors, committed to the play, can make even the most earth-bound story take wings. They were the only ones standing between the audience and the piece’s infectious solipsism.

They were mesmerizing – and the story (a play about Sylvia Plath within a coming-of-age tale set at a small liberal arts college in the 90s) did take me on a trip down memory lane. I graduated from Lewis & Clark College in 2008, but, in Portland, it might as well have been the 90s. But as it progressed away from the gentle marijuana use and sexual experimentation into the feverish Plath-esque world of Alice’s (Mary Tuomanen) mind, it became more foreign, more alien, more like Reed College.

While the stellar acting and initially reminiscent setting let me ignore the play’s faults at first, I left Incubator Arts Project wondering what Riot Group was trying to get at. Was it supposed to be about Sylvia Plath? If that was the case they could have stuck with the play-within-a-play and dispensed with the intricate framing devise. Was it a celebration of being a privileged white girl in the 90s? And is that really play-worthy?

Obviously it is, at least in playwright Adriano Shaplin’s (who also played Bernardo and did sound) mind. But a theme drivingly interesting to the artists but not necessarily to the audience smacks of solipsism. It wasn’t just limited to Alice’s poetic brain-child “Sylvia Plath Fucks the Minotaur”, but extended to the incomprehensible lines and circles drawn on the floor to Professor Shallembarger (Drew Friedman) going to “Sylvia Plath Fucks the Minotaur” without any apparent motivation for doing so.

But I could be wrong about all this. It seemed like Sophie Gets the Horns really mattered to the Riot Group, and the trip down memory lane to the liberal arts college experience I was fortunate enough to have was nice for me. When I imply that nobody is particularly interested in the stories of privileged white women who came of age in the 90s, I omit one important group: privileged white women who came of age in the 90s. It seems that the Riot Group and Incubator Arts’ main audience are hipsters, probably the best audience for this sort of play. If it is to succeed, it will be with them.

Sophie Gets the Horns is playing at Incubator Arts Project until May 20^th. Tickets are available at the door or online at http://incubatorarts.org/riotgroup2012.html.