Heidi Armbruster is onstage as an actress. It’s a comfy, little set with a feeling of the infinite Wisconsin farmland stretching-out beyond a tiny, little living room in a farmhouse. Jason Fassl’s Lighting design, gives a warmth to a farmland infinity that feels every big as spacious and open as any cozily distant as the abstract idealization of farmland in American Midwest. Armbruster’s playing a big-city actress who has come to her father’s farm to try to figure things out. He’s suffering from terminal cancer and she’s coming to terms with her own life. She’s looking for meaning in memories at the end of one life while looking for some deeper connection in her own. Directed by Laura Gordon, actress/playwright Heidi Armbruster’s Scarecrow is a deeply engaging hour and a half at the theater. Armbruster moves from personal life to professional life two more abstract concerns. Armbruster is wit has a and endlessly endearing quirkiness about it, but isn't afraid to be slightly less than relatable. She is one of those actresses you see in pharmaceutical commercials playing the mom. And she's got out wit and wisdom about it that really resonates through some very clever and sharply-comic ambient sound design by Joe Cerqua. Armbruster keeps having fantasies about living our life in a Lifetime-Style movie and Cerqua brilliantly nails the made-for-TV scoring cues as Fassl’s lighting transitions into something that feels like it’s glowing through a video screen. All too often when once writing something autobiographical that's meant to engage a large number of people, of a tend to go in the direction of being very generic. Armbruster leans into the things that make her unique and it presents them in a way that feels very distinctive. For an hour and a half audiences get to hang out with a really enjoyable person. We’re not hanging out with somebody just talking about family life or love life or even the loss of a parent. Scarecrow renders something profoundly more distinctive and engaging. It's remarkable. And it feels remarkably fresh. Like a single actress telling her story on stage has happened countless times over the decades. But Armbruster makes her own impact as an individual through a very striking way, distinctive evening of stories told her on the edge of the life of her own father. There are similarities between Armbruster's Scarecrow and Julia Sweeney’s one-woman show And God Said Ha! Sweeney’s mid-1990s tale of her life as a working actress while dealing with her brothers cancer echo is a bit into Armbruster's more contemporary story of her life as a working actress dealing with her father’s cancer. Overall, there's a very similar feel between the two shows. However, in leading into more of who she is as a person, and who she is as a character, Armbruster has found a very unique performance that finds its own life through some endlessly enduring humor. Armbruster asserts herself onstage wonderfully. She’s that actress working along the margins of a large ensemble in some big, local production. And she’s a mother juggling everything and dealing with migraines on a pharmaceutical commercial. But more than that, she’s a warm, welcome and welcoming presence onstage that shines all the more radiantly all by herself. Next Act’s production of Scarecrow runs through March 27th at Next Act’s home on 255 S. Water St. For ticket reservations and more, visit Next Act online.
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January 2025
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