Photo Source: Carol Rosegg
The story takes place in 1991 and centers on the 30ish Miriam Hemmerick, whose advanced intellectual abilities are not matched by her social skills. The girlish Miriam is obsessed with facts and lives in a house filled with stacks of newspapers arranged in chronological order. She has merely to scan a page, and the information is forever available to her. Her brain can also synchronize the information, allowing her instantly to calculate down to the second how long it has been since an event occurred or to pluck the most obscure fact out of the blue at a moment's notice. She is also obsessed with space flight and NASA and often wears her own space helmet.
When Raina Briar, a criminal investigator for the Department of Social Security, arrives at her door, Miriam's life begins to unravel. It seems that she has been signing her parents' Social Security checks and cashing them for the last several months. When asked where her folks are, Miriam can only reply, "They flew away in a comet." Soon Kenneth Sharpe, the ambitious county prosecutor of this "average-sized town in Indiana," who is running for re-election, decides that Miriam murdered them and that he will retain office by proving it. Raina doesn't agree and teams up with public defender Grey Collins, son of Sharpe's precursor, to save Miriam. Also in the mix is the taciturn Leo Garnes, a hard-bitten public detective on the verge of retirement who has issues with the conniving Sharpe.
The only spark of originality in "7th Monarch" is the character of Miriam, but Henry settles for flashing her surface eccentricities, which actor Gretchen Hall latches onto like a life preserver. Hall is simultaneously colorful and sympathetic, but she can't give Miriam the depth and inner life that Henry has failed to provide. Leslie Hendrix, as Raina, is stuck playing that old cliché, a tough career woman with a devastating disappointment in her personal life. She brings authority and conviction that at least partly assuage some of the more maudlin moments she must deliver. The men—Michael Rupert as Sharpe, Matthew Humphreys as Collins, Michael Cullen as Garnes—are professional but more often than not fade into the woodwork in their relentlessly stereotypical roles.
Director Scott C. Embler paces the proceedings confidently and helps the actors past the most embarrassing writing. One assumes that Embler is also responsible for assembling the production team, which includes set designer Shoko Kambara, who has had the one inspired idea on display. We begin in Miriam's home, but as her life is upended by events, massive doors hidden in the walls open to create mini–playing areas for scenes happening elsewhere, an apt visual expression of the way Miriam's life is being increasingly invaded.
The trite dialogue ("You have to tell me what you know" "Dig deeper, we've got to find those bodies"), period inaccuracies (ubiquitous cell phones in 1991 Indiana?), and ham-fisted plotting wouldn't pass muster on a third-rate TV show. When a crucial piece of information came to light because a character retained incriminating letters that said character would have had no reason to keep, I gave up all remaining hope. Somerled Charitable Foundation is billed as the show's producer. Some are led indeed—right over the proverbial cliff.
Presented by Somerled Charitable Foundation at the Acorn Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St., NYC. June 24–Sept. 9. Tue., 7 p.m.; Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat., and Sun., 3 p.m. (No performances Wed., July 4; additional performances Mon., July 2, and Sun., July 8, 7 p.m.) (212) 239-6200, (800) 432-7250, or www.telecharge.com. Casting by Pat McCorkle/McCorkle Casting.
