The Tesseract Theatre Company has concentrated its season into a Summer New Play Series. This summer they’ve offered us two new plays.

Taylor Gruenloh, the company’s founder, wrote the first, The Length of a Pop Song. A mother and daughter hash things out. We’ve been through this mother-daughter thing before, though maybe not as intense as this one is, which has its own kinks and twists and turns.

The daughter, Lex, in her mid-twenties, has packed a lot of living into those years, not all of it good. She has, in fact, just been released from a hospital. Her mother, Anna. a generation older, has brought Lex back to the house where she grew up to recuperate, to the room she lived in then, with its original furnishings restored, right down to the small figure of the Virgin standing on the dresser, which Lex immediately throws into a dresser drawer.

With hints and bits and pieces, we learn the histories of the two women, accompanied by the usual accusations and apologies. Some of what Lex has done is pretty sensational, which does help to hold our attention, because it takes a while to play all this out.

A third character helps. Oliver is a friend of Lex’s. In younger days, when he was not supposed to be visiting Lex in her bedroom, Oliver would climb a tree and enter the room through a window, and he uses that method to see her now that she is out of the hospital, though he could use the front door. He has his reasons. With Oliver, Lex can share things from their past, things she might not want to share with her mother, and without the mother-daughter confrontation.

The Length of a Pop Song analyzes the two main characters pretty thoroughly, so the actors are given a lot to work with. And they do work with it. Lex, as the more troubled, is the more complicated. Rhiannon Skye Creighton’s performance is stunning. She thoroughly navigates all the corners of the character. Donna Parrone partners her well as the mother, as does  Kelvin Urday in a more subdued performance as Oliver. Karen Pierce directed them.

Brittanie Gunn’s open set provided the sparse furnishings, lit by Kevin Bowman, with sound by playwright Gruenloh. Jessa Knust was the stage manager, and Cheyenn Groom the technician. 

And we did hear the length of a pop song: “Again,” lyrics by Gruenloh and Gracie Sartin, music by Sartin and Teddy Lueke. Look for it on the charts. 

—Bob Wilcox

Photo by Taylor Gruenloh