Urbanite Theatre’s ‘Pilgrims’ is an intriguing drama with sci-fi trappings

The play’s title, “Pilgrims,” may make you think of the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. Its set, a sort of sterile-looking futuristic bedroom, and its setting, aboard an interplanetary craft, may make you think of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

But Claire Kiechel’s drama, which is the current production at Sarasota’s Urbanite Theatre, is neither historical nor fantastic. It has sci-fi trappings, but “Pilgrims” is reminiscent of such theatrical works as Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit.”

The premise of the play has its only two human characters, an unpleasantly hardened military veteran and an annoying talkative young girl, reluctantly sharing a stateroom on a spaceship that’s on a months-long journey to bring earth colonists to a distant planet. The planet, we learn, has been conquered by humans in a vicious war. The male character is a veteran of that war, and he’s intensely haunted by the things he did and saw.

He tries to avoid human interaction, and he has specifically booked a private cabin for the trip. But the craft was overbooked, so the girl shows up and announces that she’s sharing the room, and the single bed. He has no one to complain to except an obsequious robot servant who can do little but apologize and offer vacant promises to make the journey as pleasant as possible.

It only gets worse when (at least according to the robot) some sort of infectious disease invades the craft, and the soldier and the girl are quarantined.

Kiechel is a young playwright who’s building some attention in New York, where she’s based, and her writing is crisp and her characters seem actual. Both the girl and the soldier develop and change gradually and believably through the course of the 90-minute play. Even the robot becomes more complex as the situations unfold.

Everything’s right with the production, directed by Carl Forsman, who’s making his Urbanite debut. The space is configured, for this show, with raked seating facing a stage along one side of the theater. Before the action begins, you’re struck by Jerid Fox’s impersonal but beautiful set and Ryan Finzelber’s lighting.

Brendan Ragan, one of Urbanite’s two artistic directors, plays the soldier with an Everyman quality that sometimes implodes into rawness, and Betsy Helmer (as “Girl”) treads a line between being appealing and being annoying. Even before Kiechel’s words reveal it, Helmer’s performance hints that there’s more to her character than she’s letting on. Cameron Morton plays the robot Jasmine (tellingly, the only character in the play that Kiechel gives a name) with a delightfully slight touch of menace.

Kiechel’s script is smart and funny, and it wanders through a lot of ground. At various points it touches on gender differences, PTSD, the evils of war and colonization, and Sartre’s idea that “hell is other people.”

It’s intriguing and even entertaining all the way through, but it never achieves the kind of emotional impact it seems to strive for. “Pilgrims” is full of ideas but doesn’t seem to have an overriding statement that would make it more powerful than interesting.

Details: Through Sept. 10, Urbanite Theatre, 1487 Second St., Sarasota. 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. $29; under age 40 (with ID) $20; students (with ID) $5. 941-321-1397, urbanitetheatre.com.

This story was originally published August 17, 2017 at 11:08 AM with the headline "Urbanite Theatre’s ‘Pilgrims’ is an intriguing drama with sci-fi trappings."