←Recommendations of Albemarle

An exciting, inventive, and highly original piece! Not only did the spare, lyrical poetry read beautifully on the page, but it was also easy to imagine this as an audio, teleconferencing, or live play. It would live and breathe well in each medium. Compelling and briskly moving storytelling that stuck with me long after in the way it addressed moving on and giving into despair vs. charging forth with hope. There is a warm everyday humor about it that is paired with a sense of whimsy and magic and a spare beauty.

As an actor/director/producer who is drawn to pieces that present the reality of life in beautiful and unique manners, as well as work that highlights the binding qualities of the human race, ALBEMARLE was right up my alley. The play is lyrically poetic, lulling you into lushly imaginative sensations; then sharply, bitingly aware and strikingly disheartening. As the night carries on, we come to find that I's shoes are a universal one-size-fits-all, solidifying that we are all "one mad beautiful human race."

I am so thankful for this play. It felt timely to enjoy right now with such prophetic and poetic lines of dialogue, complex - but simple - layers in the characters; and the attention to what is happening now. The comedy is refreshing and intimate. The story is both timeless and timely. (March 21, 2020)

Svich operates at the height of her powers with this song of teenage longing and bravado that aches and swells while rocking out, or "kicking the world fantastic." Albemarle kicks, that's for sure. I had the good fortune to direct a reading of this play in February of 2020 at the Wild Project in NYC, and the text - intricate, offbeat, simple - yielded up a polyvocal world of remarkable variety and depth. It's a joy for actors, and a true gem of a new play.

Svich brings you the brink. You are at the edge-lands of despair. I is coming age amid a barren landscape of memory and dust. I is wishing for those past who gave them goodness while noting the futility of wishing. But then there’s a badger. And a cleaner in a remnant of a once splendid opera house. And briefly some good happens. Going forward may mean letting go of what sustained you/them. The play haunts and mesmerizes. Both I and Albermarle will stay with you for a long time. As will the nature of hope.

This play worked its way into my heart in the most surprising of ways. Intimate and epic. Unpredictable and oddly familiar. Sometimes I felt like "I," in love + beaten up + confused. And sometimes I felt like "You," stuck in a perpetual blank "..."

Love this play.

Caridad Svich's 'Albemarle' is set in the world of decay; in a town so far beyond its better days, the residents, government, even animals have given up on it, all resigned to their fate, some seeking to expedite it, others distracting themselves with simple pleasures, like avocados; it is also set in the decay of hope, the protagonist embarking on a dark night of the soul, speaking to the one who got away about living the ghost of an existence. The play finds connections between growing up, disillusionment, loss, heartbreak and, as a politician once coined, the audacity of hope.