Theater: A Homeric Tale

Which cultural touchstone would you choose as your lifeline in a terrifying situation?

For characters whove survived an environmental catastrophe, playwright Anne Washburn selected an episode of The Simpsons. Not a bad idea, considering the TV series has persisted for a quarter-century. Hey, if youve just lived through a near apocalypse, wouldnt you latch on to something with staying power?

In the dark comedy Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play, seven people who apparently have made it through a massive meltdown of the nations nuclear power plants gather to take stock and start society anew. They begin by discussing the Cape Feare episode from The Simpsons, a paranoid spoof of the 1991 movie Cape Fear, which was based on the 1962 movie Cape Fear, which was based on the 1957 novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald.

This concept of retelling stories and how society embraces its own history through them lies at the heart of Mr. Burns. In the course of three acts and 82 years, Washburn advances the story from one about desperate people bonding through pop culture to one about society learning its history through a new generations interpretation of that culture.

In ACT Theatres staging of Mr. Burns this month and next, Seattle audience favorite Anne Allgood leads Washburns eclectic troupe as it stumbles its way into the future.

Washburn, who spent time with Seattles Annex Theatre after graduating from Reed College in Portland, says she used the Cape Feare episode from The Simpsons to illustrate how humans deal with primal fear by diverting their attention away from it, thus making it more manageable.

Which is one way of explaining how Act 3 of Mr. Burns turns into a musical.