Review: In Deep Blue Sound, the Orcas Have Gone Silent, but the Humans Are Quite Vocal

Where are the whales of yesteryear? A Pacific Coast community demands answers. Playwright Abe Koogler (Staff Meal) doesn’t shy away from chaos and ambiguity in Deep Blue Sound, which debuted as part of Clubbed Thumb’s 2023 “Summerworks” slate. Each of the nine actors gets at least two roles, and some triple up.

A semicircle of mismatched wooden chairs spreads across the stage (basic set by dots). At the outset, the performers identify their characters.  “I play Ella, who’s dying of cancer,” says Maryann Plunkett, followed by Arnie Burton who chimes in: “I play John, her dear friend who doesn’t know that.”

The restive townsfolk are there to voice their concern over migrating orcas that have failed to make their annual appearance. The meeting room morphs to allow glimpses of the islanders’ private lives. The actors slip in and out of their characters seamlessly. Plotlines interweave and often take surprising tangents.

Jan Leslie Harding alternates roles as a geeky horse groomer who fruitlessly courts penpals online, and later as a town therapist trying to guide her patients through various crises with compassion and tact (“I try to be discreet when I see my clients out and about”). One of them is Chris (Armando Riesco), who has anger issues and is determined to reunite with his level-headed massage therapist wife, Mary (a resolute Miriam Silverman).

Crystal Finn plays Mo—a mom hard-pressed to support the dance ambitions of her patently untalented teenage son (Riesco again)—and also power-mad Mayor Annie, who was accorded the honorific title at the island’s summer strawberry festival for her dubious work with stray dogs. Finn’s petty tyrant—alternately pontificating and sputtering with righteous indignation—resonates: “I have governed with expansive mandates!” she boasts.

Several other superb actors fade in and out: Carmen Zilles as Ella’s empathetic but restless gay daughter, who left behind a complicated New York relationship to come home and help out; Mia Katigbak as the local newspaper editor, who has a very surprising story from her youth that she’s eager to relate; and Ryan King as a mysterious woodsman of very few words who possesses a strange animal magnetism.

Arin Arbus directs this triple-tiered circus with a light, deft hand, and the design elements—weathered clothing by Emily Rebholz, mood-sensitive lighting by Isabella Byrd, allusive sound by Mikael Sulaimon—summon a community that has settled into a non-showy appreciation of their natural surroundings, if not always one another’s quirks.

It’s the actors who shine, individually as well as collectively. As painful as it is to witness Plunkett portraying another character who’s facing a terminal diagnosis (following her role in The Notebook), she’s superb at juggling moods, from acceptance to profound irritation and back again.

Few plays successfully combine gut-wrenching pathos with a steady stream of belly laughs. Each story in Deep Blue Sound could support its own play. Koogler sends us off marveling at the great tragicomedy that we all get to enact, just by living on our own little islands scattered about this strange, challenging biosphere.